


A Nightingale In A Golden Cage

by Theyna_Shipper



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: An unreasonable amount of snuggles, Angst, Baby, Ben is not hurting her ever, Ben's dad mode: activated, Ben's husband mode: activated, Dark, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Family, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, If that even exists, Just making this clear, Love, More tags to be added, No Smut, Parents, Psychological Manipulation, Rey uses getting snuggles from the baby to secretly steal cuddles from Ben, Reylo Baby, Scavenger Instincts, Supreme Leader Armitage Hux, Swearing, Torture, Use of reproductive material without consent, Violence, dark themes, snuggles, there's that too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:20:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28764708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theyna_Shipper/pseuds/Theyna_Shipper
Summary: “Meet your daughter,” Hux says.“No,” she whispers softly.”No.”A baby, only a few months old, stares at her with big, scared eyes reaching towards her. Yet she can’t bring herself to reach back.“I don’t have a daughter,” Rey insists in confusion.“The program was started under Supreme Leader Snoke. When you were on Starkiller, Rey, we took you to MedBay while you were still unconscious and took one of your eggs– a very simple, non-invasive procedure. You may not even have noticed the scar.”Actually, shedidrecall seeing a small nick on her stomach after Starkiller, but she thought she’d gotten it in the fight, and hadn’t thought twice about it. Still, surely not…“We used some of Kylo’s DNA to fertilize it, had a surrogate carry the fetus, and three months ago, little Deandra was born.”“What do you want?”“I want you to raise her. Train her. Make her as powerful as you in the Force. I expect you to make her a warrior.Mywarrior.”Wanting a Force super weapon, Snoke engineered the child of Rey and Kylo Ren. Now, Hux has taken control of the order, and wants them to raise her.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 150
Kudos: 200





	1. A Nightingale In A Golden Cage

**Author's Note:**

> Here's an idea I've had for a while for a dark fic. There will be occasionally dark and rape-ish themes but no non-con and I must emphasize that the relationship between Rey and Ben is NOT TOXIC. I'll be putting more trigger tags in the notes asap.
> 
> _A nightingale in a golden cage  
>  That's me locked inside reality's maze  
> Come someone make my heavy heart light  
> It all starts with a lullaby  
> ~Escapist by Nightwish _

Rey buries her face in her pillow defeatedly, her head still throbbing with a persistent headache. It’s been there since this morning and refuses to go away despite hydration, painkillers, and everything else she can think of. 

So, she’s finally given in to lying inert in the dark with the lights out while the headache rages and she feels useless. 

But even that peace is disturbed by a pounding on her door and Finn’s voice saying, “Rey? There’s something big going on, we’re not sure what, but you’d better come out.”

“What–” Rey groans, stumbling out the door. 

“Come on.”

He leads her to the command room, where what must be most of the base is gathered. 

“There’s been a coup,” Leia announces solemnly. 

“A what?”

“Armitage Hux has taken control of the First Order away from Kylo Ren.” 

“But…” She shakes her head. Is this why she’s been feeling awful all day? Is it the Bond? _Oh god, is he hurt?_ She hasn’t seen him in a year but the thought sickens her to her core. “Kylo. What are they going to do with him?”

“Execute him, presumably,” Poe says coolly. “One less thing we need to deal with.” 

“No!” Rey says so loudly everyone turns to stare. “I mean… he could flip now, right? Maybe he would be willing to give us inside information.” 

“Maybe. But the difficulty of getting him would massively outweigh any benefit we might gain.”

“Oh,” she says in a small voice. Suddenly, she begins to feel stifled by the crowd in the room. “Back in a minute,” she mumbles as she steps out. 

Dizzy, confused, heart racing, she sits down on the floor outside the command room. Why is she so worried about him? Yes, she’d gotten to know him, even cared about him at one point… but that was a year ago, and he had proven that he was still dark at heart, hadn’t he? 

But he’d changed since he became Supreme Leader, liberating systems, doing away with the planet-destroying weapons, passing new measures to help the poor in the galaxy. A tiny, vain part of her had hoped he might be doing it for her, to prove something to her that he hadn’t quite been able to before. There were so many times she’d been tempted to go to him again, or at the very least open the bond. There were even times when she woke up in the middle of the night and felt certain there was another warm body in the bed with her. 

And now Rey feels sick and like she’s been punched, because despite everything, the thought that they’re going to _kill_ him seems unbearable. 

After giving herself some time to breathe, but feeling no better, she stumbles back in to hear a briefing that makes her feel no better. Hux will, no doubt, resume the ruthless and authoritarian policies that prevailed under Snoke. Any hope of reaching a peace deal has no doubt been lost. It is all bleak and scary and overall crushing. 

Rey goes back to bed that night with shaking hands, and turbulent thoughts even drown out her terrible headache. Any sleep she gets is plagued by dreams that she does not quite remember, but leave her with a lingering sense of fear. 

Sometime, early in the morning, she comes to the conclusion that she _needs_ to find Ben– for herself, for the Resistance, for all the lives in the galaxy that will be saved. Whatever he may or may not have done, he has a brilliant and beautiful mind, and it would be a shame to rob the galaxy of that. 

And even if she fails, well, the Resistance won’t miss her or one broken-down X-wing, will they?

She creeps out into the darkness with a little pack containing a blaster and a ration bar, She climbs into an X-wing that some poor pilot has left unlocked and, before she can lose her nerve, takes off. 

She knows where the First Order’s most likely prison is– they are much less secretive about their locations than the Resistance. And, fortunately, it’s only one jump away. As soon as she is far enough away to enter hyperspace, she does so. 

_I’m coming to you, Ben,_ she thinks. _Just hold tight._

Immediately, something feels wrong, like alarm bells in the back of her head. This, this is _not_ where she’s supposed to be. 

Her suspicions are confirmed when two TIEs fly in behind her. 

“Stop where you are or we’ll make you.” 

Rey presses forwards towards the planet nervously, preparing to evade their fire. She makes it some distance before feeling the slow pull of… _oh no._

She’s being pulled on to one of the First Order cruisers by a tractor beam, being dragged in even as she tries to pull away at full speed. She draws her blaster, preparing to fight, placing her feet against the door of the ship. 

“Stay right where you,” growls a voice as she lands. She expects a fight, but instead, a gas canister comes crashing through her window, filling the cockpit with smoke. She draws her shirt over her face but too late, she can already feel herself drifting unconscious. 

_“Did you get her?”_ a voice asks. 

_“Fell right into our trap,”_ another confirms. 

Wondering what this means, she falls unconscious in the cockpit.

* * *

“Why did you come?” a voice growls when she wakes up. 

She shakes hair out of her eyes, and slowly processes that she is in a call, and that’s… that’s Kylo. Ben. Whoever he is. 

“I… I came for you,” she whispers. 

“You fell right into their trap. You didn’t even give me time to warn you.” 

“What…”

“I don’t know what they want you for, but I know they do, and it can’t be good. You should have stayed with the Resistance.”

“I came to _save_ you!”

“You should have left me!” 

It’s ironic how different this from the last time he spoke to her: _Don’t leave me._

“Yeah. Maybe I should have,” she spits, all her warm feelings suddenly disappearing. She forgot how _insufferable_ he could be sometimes. 

After a few minutes of bitter silence, she remembers that he is her only ally here and asks, “How long have you been here?”

“A day or two? Ever since Hux ‘dismissed’ me. I think they’ve been waiting for you before they do anything with either of us.” 

“Why do they want me?” 

Kylo shrugs. “I predict we don’t have much longer to wait, though.” 

He is right. Within a few hours, guards are hauling them out of their cells to meet the _Supreme Leader._ It eerily echoes their last encounter, except this time both of them are in cuffs, and there is only uncertainty weighing upon them, no hope or even curiosity. 

“Ren. Scavenger,” Hux greets. He has taken the Supreme Leader’s throne and remains in his austere uniform. Something small and box-like sits in front of him, though Rey has no guess as to what it could be. “A pleasure.” 

“I’m sure,” Kylo replies drily, cocky as ever despite their circumstances. 

“I’m sure you’re wondering why I kept either of you alive–”

“Actually, Hux, I think it will shock you how little your motives generally concern me.”

 _Stop,_ Rey thinks. _You’re going to get us killed._

_Sorry,_ he sends back, and then she realizes they have one _significant_ advantage against him versus against Snoke: Hux can use the Force about as well as a melon could. 

Hux sneers coolly, and steeples his fingers. “They should concern you now. I’m putting you in charge of one of Supreme Leader Snoke’s _pet_ projects.” 

_What kind of no-good, screwed up, twisted game..._

“Rey, I’ve heard you’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a _real_ family.” 

She feels her gut twist. Who gave him the right to say these things about her, to _know_ these things about her… still, she will not grace it with a response. 

“And Kylo… perhaps you could make up for your own family’s failures with you.” 

A barely-restrained growl escapes his throat. 

Hux gestures to the box in front of him. “Come here, Rey.” 

She stays firmly planted. 

_”Come here.”_ One of the guards jabs her in the back with some kind of electric shock, and she stumbles forward unwillingly, forced to her knees. 

The guard slowly pulls a cover off the basket, and Rey’s throat tightens with horror. 

“Meet your daughter.” 

“No,” she whispers softly. _”No.”_

A baby, only a few months old, stares at her with big, scared eyes reaching towards her. Yet she can’t bring herself to reach back. 

“I don’t have a daughter,” Rey insists in confusion. 

“This is ridiculous,” Kylo shouts. “Whose child did you steal?” 

“No one’s, I assure you.” 

“Then how…”

“Quite simple, really. The program was started under Supreme Leader Snoke. When you were on Starkiller, Rey, we took you to MedBay while you were still unconscious and took one of your eggs– a very simple, non-invasive procedure. You may not even have noticed the scar.”

Actually, she _did_ recall seeing a small nick on her stomach after Starkiller, but she thought she’d gotten it in the fight, and hadn’t thought twice about it. Still, surely not…

“We used some of Kylo’s DNA to fertilize it, had a surrogate carry the fetus, and three months ago, little Deandra was born.” 

“No,” Rey insists, “No, you’re lying.” 

“I don’t have to lie,” he replies with an evil grin. 

Rey snaps her head to Kylo. “You knew, didn’t you? You _knew_ they were going to do this. That they took this from me. Made _this._ And then used yourself as _bait_ to– to lure me here!”

“Rey, I swear to, I had no idea. I was only away from you for a moment on Starkiller.” 

“Liar!” She shrieks, tears clouding her eyes. 

The baby is upset by her screaming, and starts to cry, flailing her arms. 

Kylo attempts to step forward, but is knocked back by the guards. 

“She’s not mine,” Rey repeats. _“She’s not mine.”_

“Surely you wouldn’t reject your own _child,_ Rey,” Hux insists. “Not after–”

She isn’t going to let him do this anymore. “What do you want?” 

“I want you to raise her. Train her. Make her as powerful as you in the Force.”

“What makes you think we would?”

“Because if you don’t,” and as he says he turns to Ben, “I’ll torture her. Rey. Slowly. And I’ll make you watch. And then I’ll kill you first so she can watch. And then maybe the baby, too.” His slick demeanor vanishes, replaced with a cold, cruel gleam. He shrugs. “But it’s up to you what you value most, of course.”

“And if we say yes?” 

“I’ll keep you on that planet down below, in our fortress. It will be just the three of you and I expect you to make her a warrior. _My_ warrior.” 

Rey looks over her shoulder at Ben, who looks like he’s ready to throw up. “You didn’t know, did you?” 

“Never.” 

“We kept it from him,” Hux says, and oh how she would like to tell him to shut up. “Knew he wouldn’t approve, as Supreme Leader. He always had a soft spot for you. It was his greatest weakness. And I suppose, yours too–”

“Stop,” Ben demands. “Just stop. We’ll do what you want, just leave us alone. Leave the baby alone. Please.” 

_”Good.”_

And with that, the crying baby is shoved into Rey’s arms, and the guards drag them away.


	2. He Loves You Dwelling In Fear and Sin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That is _not_ my child,” Rey hissed softly, rocking back on forth on her bed. 
> 
> Ben puts one finger through the bars of the cradle, and Deandra grabs it in her little fist. “She has your eyes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the positive comments on the first chapter! It made me want to get this second one out right away. I'll be discussing the story more (and adding content warnings) in the end notes, but for now please enjoy!
> 
> Also, I should note that the original idea for this fic came from _Battlestar Galactica_ but by the time I was working with it it was quite far removed from that plot so it's more of a "loosely inspired by" at this point. 
> 
> _Behold the crown of a heavenly spy  
>  Forged in blood of those who defy  
> Kiss the ring, praise and sing  
> He loves you dwelling in fear and sin.  
> ~Weak Fantasy, by Nightwish_

“That is _not_ my child,” Rey hissed softly, rocking back on forth on her bed. 

Ben puts one finger through the bars of the cradle, and Deandra grabs it in her little fist. “She has your eyes.” 

“Lots of babies have hazel eyes, Ben.”

“But she has _your_ eyes.” 

She shakes her head in disbelief. “Do you seriously _want_ this? Want to raise a child… like this?”

“No,” he says, “But it’s not like we have a choice.” 

“I don’t even think this is real,” Rey insists. “That can’t possibly be… ours. There’s no way.” 

“Possibly not.” He still won’t look at Rey, only focusing on the baby gurgling in the crib. 

“This _isn’t_ real, Ben. It’s some sick, twisted mind game and you just want us to go along with it. He’s using us, toying with us, building this kriffing _dollhouse for us_ , and Maker only knows why. We can’t just… let him!”

“You think I don’t _know?_ ” Ben growls, snapping his head towards her suddenly. “I know his every move, he’s learned it all from Snoke. It’s always some kind of mind game with them. And sometimes the consequences are real, and sometimes they aren’t, and you will _never_ know. So maybe you’re right, maybe this is all a set up. But I’m not going to play, not so long as there’s someone else’s life on the line.” 

“But–”

“You can deny this all you want, but we’re all that’s between this girl and whatever horrible fate Hux has planned for her. So unless you want her to _die_ Rey, we’re going along with whatever the hell this is!” 

The baby becomes distressed by all the yelling, and starts to cry again. Rey winces and scootches away, but Ben turns back to her and reaches into the cradle. 

“It’s alright. No one’s going to hurt you,” he says in a measured voice. “Don’t cry.” He reaches into the crib and picks her up, resting her against his shoulder. “There, there. It’s alright.” 

She relaxes slightly, though still whimpering slightly, and lets Ben hold her. 

Rey is shaken by all of it– the baby, him, being trapped here– and she doesn’t know how to process it. “What– do you know how to– what to do with her?” 

“She has a name,” Ben replies. 

Rey swallows. Something about the name seems wrong, too much for such a little girl. “Deandra.”

“It means _divine protector.”_

“We– we can call her Dee,” she suggests. 

Ben pulls away slightly to look at the baby. “Hello, Dee.” 

She makes a face at him, and he tucks her back against his chest. “We’ll work on that one later.” 

It’s scary how comfortable he looks with her, like he’s done this his whole life, like he _knows_ how he’s supposed to do this. She certainly doesn’t. 

“Whatever this is,” he says, “Whatever we do– we need to learn to work together. Whether it’s survive, or escape, or… I don’t know. We have to be able to do it together.” 

“Yeah,” Rey says shakily. “Ok. We’ll do this… together.” 

Ben sits on the opposite end of the bed and gently rocks Dee to sleep. She watches him from a distance, trying to understand how he can take this all so in stride. “You… You really didn’t know anything about it?”

“Not a word.” He adjusts Dee slightly. “I would never have let them. Never would have wanted you to… to do this.” He shakes his head… “At least they didn’t… didn’t force you, or–”

“No,” Rey agrees. “But they still took that from me. Took away my right to decide when I wanted that, if I wanted that. It’s not okay… and whether or not she’s really mine, they want me to think she is. And that’s… that’s not okay.”

He nods slowly, and Rey scoots a little closer to have another look at Dee. 

Ben, however, misinterprets her closeness and asks, “Do you want to hold her?”

“No!” Rey says, so forcefully it almost wakes Dee up.

“Rey… is everything alright?” 

“I just don’t want to hold her.” 

Ben raises an eyebrow suspiciously, but before he can say anything they both feel the lurch of coming out of hyperspace. 

“We’re landing,” Rey says quickly. “We’d better be ready to go to our… lodgings.” She carefully avoids saying _cell_ , though that is what she is expecting.

He nods, and carefully stands up with Dee. “Together?” 

“Together.”

* * *

Hux seems intent on keeping them as in the dark as possible about what their situation is. Other than _clearly prisoners_ , Ben has no idea where they are or what they are expected to do. 

The planet is drab and brown, with a single sun and a fairly predictable day-night cycle. This, at least, will be good for establishing a sleep schedule for Dee. 

(And he’s still reeling a little with how quickly his vision has tunneled to focus solely on this little girl, who is as yet still asleep. Rey may not be ready to accept this– that Dee may or may not be their child, that either way they must be the one to care for her, at least for now– but somehow, it has all made perfect sense to him. 

And he _does_ think that Dee is theirs, though it is more of a feeling than anything based in what he knows. But he’s learned not to discount feelings too quickly.) 

“Move along,” growls a guard, jabbing him in the back. He can see Rey’s eyes swiveling all around the base, looking for weak points, ways they might escape. He is focused on keeping Dee asleep until they are somewhere more secure. 

Finally, they come to a door, and one of the guards kicks it open. “Get in.” 

They step in quickly, and find a reasonably spacious chamber, certainly nicer than the cells they were in. There is a single largeish bed in the center of the room, a refresher set off from the bedroom, and what must be a nursery set off by a partition. 

“Don’t even think about leaving,” they warn as they close the door. 

Ben immediately goes behind the partition, where a crib, a playpen, and a handful of toys are laid out. Of course, Hux wouldn’t let his _warrior_ live in squalor. 

He carefully lowers Dee into the crib, but she notices right away, and wakes up. _Please don’t cry,_ he thinks, but instead she reaches towards one of the toys on the floor, through the bars of the crib. 

_Oh._ These must have been from wherever she was before. “This one?” he picks up a plush red dragon and watches a little smile break across her face, bringing out the dimples in her cheeks. The sight stirs something in his chest. 

“Get some sleep, okay?” He sets the dragon down in the crib and she immediately starts chewing on it, in true baby fashion. “Or not.” 

He turns away, but leaves the partition open, and collapses on the bed. Rey takes off her shoes and sits down. “What are we going to do, Ben? For real?” 

He doesn’t answer. He feels lost, so horribly lost and helpless. 

“The Resistance might come looking for us… it wasn’t too hard for me to find this base, maybe they’ll be able to find us too?” she suggests. 

When he’d seen what Hux was doing, even in the chaos and violence, Ben had thought, if there was one blessing out of all of this, maybe he’d have an excuse to see Rey again. Maybe he could run away and find her. Maybe they could start over. 

That was horribly naïve of him, of course, but this is far _worse_ than anything he could possibly have imagined. Now both of them are trapped here, along with an innocent baby. 

“Ben? Are you listening to me?”

He nods against the pillow. 

“The base is _really_ well secured. They aren’t screwing up another Starkiller,” she continues. 

“Rey,” he replies. “I think we should assume, for the time being, that everything we do is being watched. No matter how long we seem.”

“Oh,” she says softly. “Okay.” 

Then, to his shock, she lies next to him on the bed and places a hand on his forearm. While every muscle in his body tenses, she generally pushes against the bond. 

_I don’t see escape as a viable possibility right now._

Naturally. This is their most secure method of communication right now. He shouldn’t have assumed anything. Hoped anything. 

_What do you suggest?_

_Getting to know the base better. Getting a feel for how everything operates. Maybe we’ll find an opening. But I think it’s most likely we have to wait for Resistance rescue._

_That could be ages,_ he insists. 

_Do you have a better plan?_

No, he must admit, he does not. 

_You worry about Dee and I can worry about getting us out of here, okay?_ Rey suggests. 

_Okay._

“I’m going to go see what supplies we have,” Rey says, the verbal communication jarring him. “Do you think Dee needs to be fed?” 

“Probably,” he realizes, and how neglectful of him it was not to think of this. Maker, he’s going to need to get his act together if he’s going to be her… 

Her _father?_ He told Rey as much, that they’re the closest thing she has to parents right now, but he hadn’t fully processed the reality of that scenario. He has no right to be a father. He’s barely in control of himself, let alone another human being. He killed his _own_ father, for kriff’s sake. 

Maybe someday Dee could kill him, too, and spare the galaxy that headache.

“I think I saw some formula earlier. I can figure that out while you get her.” 

“Yeah,” he grunts, pushing himself up off the bed. “Yeah, be right there.” He drags himself to Dee’s room and sees her happily gnawing on her own foot, the slobbery stuffed dragon tossed aside. 

“You must be hungry, little one,” Ben sighs. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you something.” 

She reaches up her arms towards him as he scoops her up, and despite everything, despite his certainty he _cannot_ be a good father to her, he feels a rush of warmth. Surely, he thinks, he should be more averse to the idea of being forced into this, the way Rey is. But he can’t help the sense of responsibility he feels towards Dee. 

Suddenly he understands why the Jedi forbade attachment, because he knows already, he would do anything, _anything_ , to keep her safe.

* * *

Rey opens a supply closet filled with formula and diapers and begins to skim the package directions. _Mix formula with water, heat to 98.6 degrees in bottle, stir in formula…_ It all seems fairly straightforward. 

She only volunteered to do this so she wouldn’t have to spend more time with Dee. Something doesn’t sit right with her about the whole scenario. For one thing, it’s been shocking to see Ben become a… a caretaker (she won’t go further than that, for now) to the baby so quickly. He seems like he could be good at this whole thing. 

Rey, though, she knows she could never be that. Even when she’s fantasized about having a family or someone to spend her life with, it has never included a child of her own. It’s not that she doesn’t _want_ that– she just feels certain she would only be disappointing as a mother. She can’t even _touch_ Dee without feeling _wrong_ inside. No one should be trusting her with a child. 

But, unfortunately, someone has, so she heats up a bottle of formula and brings it to Ben. She watches Dee to make sure she takes the bottle and it is not too hot, but leaves as quickly as she can so she does not feel like an intruder upon this oddly intimate scene. 

When Ben returns from feeding, burping, and changing the baby, and settling her back in the crib, he just looks at Rey with tired eyes. 

“This is so, _so_ wrong,” he whispers. 

“I know,” she says gently, “I know.” 

Then, in what is surely a lapse of judgement, but somehow feels right now, she lets him collapse into her arms, and they just hold each other tightly until they can stumble to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Mention of forced pregnancy
> 
> So in this fic, I thought it would be interesting to explore the idea of Rey _not_ being eager to have a family, but rather being intimidated by it. I also wanted to explore her initially rejecting a child despite having been a rejected child herself. It seems like an interesting contrast and a good way to study the character. I hope you agree. Obviously she'll be evolving, as will Ben, but I wanted to start here for something different. 
> 
> I considered switching around with the Ben/Kylo names but instead decided to just do Ben to keep it simple, hope you don't mind  
> The title of this chapter is taken from one of my favorite songs, but it's also a bit of a bad joke, as they are technically "living in sin" by living together with a child while still unmarried, even though it's not technically ~like that~. 
> 
> I really hope you're enjoying, please drop a comment if you are!


	3. Breath of Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Ben?” She rolls over to shake him awake. (And yes, it’s occurred to her that it’s odd how they’re sharing a bed, but there’s not much they can do about it, and it’s big enough to avoid awkwardness so long as her nightmares remain at bay). “Ben, Dee’s awake.”_
> 
> _“Can you get her?” he grumbles, still half asleep._
> 
> _“I– I don’t know how,” she says shakily._
> 
> _“Just make sure she doesn’t need anything, and stay with her ‘til she goes back to sleep.”_
> 
> _Dee lets out another piercing wail, and Rey’s gut twists. “I can’t.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo! I know these first few chapters have come pretty fast but I have a lot of ideas for this fic. School starts for real tomorrow, though, so I'll have less time to write. Ah well. I'll be honest, this chapter pretty much wrote itself, everything the characters did just sort of naturally happened. The pacing on this will certainly be weird and there will be a lot of back-and-forth but I think it should be fairly coherent. Also apparently when I let my goblin hands do what they want they write the angstiest angst every to angst followed by the fluffiest fluff ever to fluff. 
> 
> Check the end notes for content warnings. 
> 
> _I was looking for a breath of life,  
>  A little touch of heavenly light  
> But all the choirs in my head sang no, oh, oh oh.  
> To get a dream of life again  
> A little vision of the start and the end  
> But all the choirs in my head sang no, oh, oh, oh.  
> ~Breath of Life, Florence and the Machine_

Two more days pass like this, with them trying to work out how to live like this. Dee gets used to Ben, and really seems to like him, as much as a baby can understand that. She demands him nearly as much as her stuffed dragon anyways. 

Rey still does her best to watch from a distance. She cleans bottles and clothes and blankets, and keeps the nursery tidy, and has changed a couple diapers but for the most part she lets Ben do the feeding and holding and everything else. 

He talks to Dee a lot– it’s the best way to teach her to talk, he says, just saturate her with words. So he narrates what he’s doing to her. It feels so intimate and homey, and so _wrong_ in a place like this. 

She knows Dee deserves a better place to live like this. Dee deserves a better mother than Rey can be. Hello, _Ben_ deserves a better partner than Rey can be. 

But she doesn’t confront any of this until Dee wakes up in the middle of the night, but doesn’t wake Ben up. 

“Ben?” She rolls over to shake him awake. (And yes, it’s occurred to her that it’s odd how they’re sharing a bed, but there’s not much they can do about it, and it’s big enough to avoid awkwardness so long as her nightmares remain at bay). “Ben, Dee’s awake.” 

“Can you get her?” he grumbles, still half asleep. 

“I– I don’t know how,” she says shakily. 

“Just make sure she doesn’t need anything, and stay with her ‘til she goes back to sleep.”

Dee lets out another piercing wail, and Rey’s gut twists. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” He is fully awake now. 

“Please, Ben, can you get her?” she begs as the cries continue. “Please, I can’t.” 

With a sigh, he kicks off the bed covers and goes to the nursery. She hears the crying stop almost as soon as he arrives, and he returns to their bed with Dee. “We need to talk about this.” 

“Right now?” 

“Yes, now.” His voice is harsh but not angry. Something about having Dee around seems to calm him. “This won’t work if you can’t even _hold_ her.” 

She curls in on herself defensively. “It’s hard to explain.” 

“We seem to have nothing but time.” 

Dee starts playing with Ben’s hair, suggesting she plans on being awake a little while longer. 

Rey sighs and uncurls herself. “It’s not that I can’t, or that I don’t know how… it’s just, whenever I try to hold her, I–” She shakes her head. 

*

Ben has seen how Rey acts around Dee, holding her practically at arm’s length when she needs to change a diaper. He hasn’t understood it, but as everything has come down around them he hasn’t had the energy to deal with it. 

He covers one of Rey’s hands with his own. “You can tell me.” 

She buries her head in her knees. “Almost all the babies on Jakku died.”

This statistic doesn’t surprise him. If someone on Jakku could survive a pregnancy, the odds that the baby would survive must surely be lower. But still, he thinks Rey would be able to understand that they had what they needed to take care of Dee, to make sure that didn’t happen to her. 

“Even if they were born healthy, they’d often just get left out… people didn’t want two mouths to feed. So they’d leave them in the desert, and they’d wait for a sandstorm, or a jackal, or just a cold night. I never saw it happen but I knew about it. 

“But one time, I was walking home from scavenging, and there was… there was this baby boy, just left in the middle of the desert. I… I didn’t want to leave him.” 

Perhaps sensing Rey’s distress, or perhaps just lamenting the lack of attention being paid her, Dee begins to whimper again. Ben pulls her close and shushes her gently. 

“I didn’t think I could keep him, I wasn’t that naïve. But I thought maybe there would be a merchant at the outpost who was willing to take him, maybe to an orphanage in the Core or something. That seemed better than leaving him to die in the desert.”

“He didn’t make it through the night, did he?” 

She shakes her head. “I gave him some water, mixed with a little of a portion, but he was burning up all over, feverish and shaking. I stayed up all night, trying to break the fever, but he just got worse and worse and… and…” She is too choked with sobs to continue. 

“I’m so sorry, Rey.” It makes him sick to imagine that, and as Rey’s walls come down he can see it: her, no more than sixteen or seventeen, pacing her hut with a sick baby, both of them crying completely lost and out of her element. 

“I was holding him when he died. He just… he stopped breathing, and he went all cold, and… that was it.” 

“I’m sorry,” he tells her again. If he were better at this, he might put an arm around her shoulder, attempt to comfort her, but as it is he cannot bring himself to touch her anymore than he already has. 

“I’ve tried it, holding other people’s babies on the base, holding Dee on the way here, but every time, all I can think of is that little dead boy.” She sits up and wipes the tears off her face. “It’s stupid, I know, but I just can’t. It’s like it… it _broke_ me.”

“That’s really terrible, Rey. But you are not broken.” He readjusts Dee so he can face Rey properly. “And you need to learn how to do this.”

“Not right now,” she insists, for the second time that night. 

“Yes, right now.” He knows he is being harsh, but if she waits any longer surely it will only hurt more. “Come here, I’ll show you.”

Rey scoots closer to him on the bed. Carefully, he lowers Dee into her lap, helping her to position her shaking arms. 

“There, you’ve got to support her head, you’ve got it,” and he’s touching her even more now and it’s a little bit overwhelming. Dee is making it easy for them cuddling against Rey’s chest, but silent tears streak down her face.

*

Rey can feel panic slowly rising in her chest while Ben tries to make Dee comfortable in her arms. Surely something is going to go horribly wrong. Dee is going to hate her and start screaming and Ben is going to think there’s something horribly wrong with her. 

But he just arranges the baby safely, and Dee nuzzles gently against her body. 

“There,” Ben says gently. “And here–” and he grabs her hand and she feels electricity shoot down the length of her arm– “If you keep your thumb right here–” and he arranges her hand around one of Dee’s chubby wrists– “You can feel her pulse. In case you ever need to remind yourself that she’s okay.” 

“Okay,” she whispers. 

As her panic subsides, she realizes that this– holding Dee– is actually quite nice. She is warm and cuddly, the dark fuzz on top of her head is soft, and she smells wonderful. It’s pheromones or something, she believes, to help parents get attached to the baby. 

Now that she’s finally holding her, Rey never wants to let go. 

At some point Ben lets go of her, though she doesn’t notice, she is so absorbed in Dee. 

“If she’s asleep you can take her back to her crib,” he says just as Rey is starting to feel a little overwhelmed. 

“Yes, I’ll do that.” She carries herself to the nursery on shaky legs and carefully lowers Dee into the crib. Thankfully, she remains blissfully asleep, and Rey can creep back to bed. 

“You’re doing well,” Ben tells her when she slips back in. “Really. Even if it doesn’t feel like it.” 

“You’re doing better,” she mumbles. No, that’s selfish of her. “You’re really good at this, you just seem to be able to do everything so… naturally. I feel like there are all these instincts I should have, for how to take care of her, and they aren’t working. Like it should be one of those things that everyone knows and I just… don’t.” 

Ben rolls over to face her. “I barely know what I’m doing either, Rey. We’re both just making it up as we go along.” 

“You’re still making it up better than me,” she mumbles. 

“It’s not a contest. Dee doesn’t care how good or bad you think you are, she’s just happy when you’re around.” 

“You really think so?”

“I know so.” 

She shifts slightly under the covers. “Can you feel her, in the Force? I’ve tried, and I can sense her signature, but nothing else. No… feelings or anything.”

*

“I can,” Ben confirms. She has a very strong signature in the Force, and sometimes he knows when she’s going to start crying a second before she does, he can feel her distress so acutely. Almost as strong as he used to feel Rey’s before she cut him off. “I’m not sure if she can feel us. But I’m pretty sure she has the Force, that she could control it.” 

“Oh.”

He’s about to ask her if she wants to go back to bed when she asks, “Do you really think she’s ours?”

“Yes,” he admits, “Yes, I do.” And the thought brings him no joy: if he were to entertain any fantasy of him and Rey having a child, it would not be like this, against her will, as prisoners, in constant danger. “She looks enough like you. She has the Force. And… as horrible as Hux can be, I think he prefers not to lie. Being able to tell the truth and still create havoc is much more satisfying for him.”

“Why do you think I can’t feel her?” 

“I think you’re closing yourself off too much.” He volunteers the information instantly. Rey is talking to him more in this half-hour than she has in a very, very long time, and he doesn’t know why, but he wants her to get whatever it is she needs out of it. 

Right now, he thinks, she needs to feel less alone. But after everything he’s done, does he really have the right to promise her that anymore. 

“I think you’re scared of feeling something that will hurt you, so you keep yourself walled off. When you’ve opened up… you’ve gotten hurt. You don’t want that to happen again.” He hesitates, things that he both avoids thinking about and constantly thinks about rising to the surface now. “I’ve hurt you, haven’t I? When you’ve opened up?” 

“Yeah,” she says, “Yeah, you have.” 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I won’t beg for another chance, not when I know I haven’t earned it. But… I can promise to be better. For you, for her…” And isn’t this what happens when he lets himself get close to someone for too long, all his emotions come pouring out at once and he can’t control himself any more. 

“I don’t need to give you a second chance,” Rey replies. “I never gave up on you on your first chance.” She moves a little closer to him on the mattress. “I can try not to close myself up as much anymore,” she says warily. “If I get hurt–”

“I won’t let you,” Ben says suddenly, fiercely. “Not anymore, not again.” 

Rey smiles a little, and he feels a small smile of his own rising to his lips. “Do you really mean that?” 

Yes, he thinks. He means every word he says to her and then some. He’s never felt so strongly about anyone as he does towards her– feelings that he still doesn’t fully understand, but feelings that he knows are important. 

“Goodnight, Ben,” Rey says, not needing a spoken answer to know what he is thinking. They turn away from each other and settle onto their pillows. 

*

“Hold me?” Rey asks softly, as she finds the darkness suddenly oppressive, and the wide expanse of unclaimed bed lonesome, yet the boldness to ask for this only strengthened

She doesn’t expect him to do so initially– to reach across the bed until she is swallowed up by his much larger arms and falls asleep to the soothing rhythm of his breath. 

But he does, and she does, and like this Rey knows things cannot be quite the same from here on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Non-graphic depiction of an infant death, mentions of pregnancy
> 
> Thanks for reading! Your comments have been so wonderful and kind. I will also try to get a youtube playlist for this fic uploaded soon.


	4. Into The Empty Parts Of me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben is in danger of grinding his own teeth to dust with how hard he is grinding his teeth, clenching his jaw just to contain his raw rage at seeing Hux holding her. She begins to whimper softly, looking back to Ben with her wide, scared eyes. He keeps his eyes trained on her so he does not have to look at Hux. 
> 
> “Have you been training her?” Hux asks suspiciously. 
> 
> “She’s a baby,” he growls. “How the hell are we supposed to train her? She doesn’t even know her own name.” 
> 
> “The Jedi seemed to think that children were never too young–”
> 
> “And we’re trusting the _Jedi_ now?” he snorts. If he keeps this up he’ll probably earn another crack across the face, but he honestly couldn’t care less if it riles Hux up. “They certainly have a successful track record.” 
> 
> He sticks out his lip, his mind working behind his eyes. “If she doesn’t need you,” he says slowly, “Then I suppose I shouldn’t let you just wait here wasting our resources.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo! I meant to get this out earlier in the week but between my joy over the inauguration, my new D&D campaign, and ~the dysphorias~ kept me distracted. But, it's here now! Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Check the endnotes for content warnings. 
> 
> _Her eyes look sharp and steady  
>  Into the empty parts of me  
> But still my heart is heavy  
> With the hate of another man's belief._   
> _~Hozier, Foreigner's God_

“What are you doing?” 

Ben looks up from where he sits, balancing Dee on his thighs. “Just checking to see where she’s at. Developmentally.” 

Rey sits down next to him. “Where is she?” 

“Ok. A little behind in some places, but not so bad.” 

“Behind how?” 

“Well, she’s supporting weight on her legs, that’s good. Holding her head at right angles, good. And she smiles.” Ben gently ruffles the fuzz on her head, and a toothless smile splits her face, the sweetest little smile he’s ever seen. 

He hears Rey laugh next to him, and turns to ask, “What?” 

“Nothing,” Rey says, “It’s just… I’ve never seen you smile before. It’s… It’s nice.” She gestures to Dee. “You both have dimples.” 

Now come to think of it he doesn’t remember the last time he smiled, hadn’t really realized he was just then. 

He sets Dee back down in his lap, and looks back at Rey. 

His feelings towards Rey are… complicated, to say the least. Even he is not so oblivious to deny that he has feelings for her, but _where_ exactly they are is a bit more intricate. 

He’d never felt like this for anyone until Rey. There had been something drawing about her presence in the Force immediately, something strong and powerful. And then their bond had opened and they had slowly opened up to each other and learned each other’s lives and scars and fears. 

And then, when Rey had reached her hand out to him, and he so nearly taken it, he had realized so startingly yet so clearly, _I’m in love with her._

Because this had to be what people meant, when they talked about love– to want this person to have everything of you, and to want everything of them– didn’t it? Because he had never known a certainty like this, that he was meant to be hers. 

And then he’d gone and ruined everything. 

And if this was a second chance, well… it was under the worst circumstances possible. 

“You said she was behind in some places, though?” Rey asks, breaking him out of his reverie. 

“Yes,” he mumbles. “Yes, she’s– _ow,_ ” because as he was not paying attention Dee reached over his shoulder to play with his hair, and is now tugging on it painfully.

Rey laughs again, and he is nearly dragged down another overly long train of thought over how beautiful that laugh is, but Rey returns him to the topic again, once Dee’s hands are safely out of reach of his hair. 

“She’s, ah… if she’d been with us three months already,” _if she was truly ours,_ “She would be able to recognize our smells. But, that will probably take a little longer, so it’s not surprising. I’m not worried.” 

Rey nods, a silent acknowledgement that yes, they’ll probably be with her long enough for that to happen, likely even longer. “Is there anything else? That she should be doing?” 

He sighs. She looks so perfect, curled up happily in his arms, that he is loathe to say there is _anything_ wrong with her. But, if they really want to do things right with her, well–

“She should be sleeping through the night. At least starting to.” 

“Oh.” 

In the week that Dee has been with them, she’s woken up crying every night, sometimes more than once in the night, and mostly without a reason. And Ben knows that babies wake up in the night, but by three months she should be sleeping better, and he can’t help but be concerned. 

“Maybe she’s just adjusting, to being somewhere new, but I’d still feel better if she was sleeping.” 

Dee seems to sense that he is distracted, and wraps one of her hands around his thumb to get his attention back. 

“I know, heavens forbid I leave you alone for more than a second,” Ben sighs, boosting her back up. “You’re very demanding, you know that?” 

Dee smiles innocently in reply, and Ben shifts her carefully in his arms. 

“Maybe that’s it,” Rey suggests. “Maybe she’s lonely.” She reaches out to touch Dee’s cheek, brushing Ben’s arm as she does. “She always stops as soon as you come. Maybe she’d sleep better in our bed.” 

“I…” Yes, she probably would, but there are several problems with that. “What if… what if I hurt her?” 

“How would you?” she asks, now holding one of Dee’s hands. 

“I… I move around in my sleep a lot,” he says weakly, knowing how thinly that disguises the real reason. 

Rey, thankfully, knows exactly what he means and says nothing more about that. “We could move her crib,” Rey suggests, “Take off one of the rails and push it up next to the bed. She would be nice and cozy.” She kneels down by the crib and studies the construction. “It doesn’t look too hard.” And studying the crib, imagining how she’d fix it up, she actually looks _excited_ for once. 

“I think that would be very nice,” Ben says softly. “Don’t you, Dee? Ah, you’re asleep.” 

Rey reaches for the baby to put her in her crib, but their singular moment of domestic happiness is interrupted by the sound of a door being kicked open. 

They both freeze, and Dee’s eyes flutter open, wide and scared. 

Rey stands up to see what it is, but Ben gestures for her to sit down. Make them come to you, he has learned, it is best that way. He pats Dee’s back gently, nervously, and waits to see what it is. 

A guard knocks aside the partition to the nursery, and Hux steps through, his black boots clicking on the floor. 

Half unconsciously, he pulls Dee closer to his chest, and Rey tightens their circle, pulling closer. 

“Isn’t this sweet,” Hux purrs, his eyes landing on each of them in turn. “How’s the little one doing? I’m sure her mother and father are–”

“Hux,” Ben growls warningly. He doesn’t trust himself not to act rashly right now, whether in protection of Rey and Dee or just out of pure rage. 

_”Supreme Leader,”_ Hux corrects slickly. 

“I’m not calling you tha–” But he is stopped by the butt of the guard’s gun cracking across his face, stumbling to the ground, nearly dropping Dee just before Rey scoops her up. 

Hux turns to Rey. “Give her to me.” 

She sits defiantly still, keeping the baby who is close to tears protected from this menace. 

“Give. Her. To. Me.” But, Ben sees as he drags himself off the floor, blood dripping down his face, she sits still and does not give in. 

Hux nods to the guard, who snatches the baby from Rey, and hands her to the general, studying her with reptilian eyes. 

Ben is in danger of grinding his own teeth to dust with how hard he is grinding his teeth, clenching his jaw just to contain his raw rage at seeing Hux holding her. She begins to whimper softly, looking back to Ben with her wide, scared eyes. He keeps his eyes trained on her so he does not have to look at Hux. 

“Have you been training her?” Hux asks suspiciously. 

“She’s a baby,” he growls. “How the hell are we supposed to train her? She doesn’t even know her own name.” 

“The Jedi seemed to think that children were never too young–”

“And we’re trusting the _Jedi_ now?” he snorts. If he keeps this up he’ll probably earn another crack across the face, but he honestly couldn’t care less if it riles Hux up. “They certainly have a successful track record.” 

He sticks out his lip, his mind working behind his eyes. “If she doesn’t need you,” he says slowly, “Then I suppose I shouldn’t let you just wait here wasting our resources.” 

“We wouldn’t be wasting your resources if you hadn’t kidnapped us,” Rey retorts. “Having second thoughts, are we?” 

Hux looks at them. “You’re quite a pair.” Then he continues with his previous train of thought: “So long as you’re not doing anything for her, I suppose you can work in our factories here.” 

“Factories,” Rey repeats. 

“This is where we manufacture the trooper armor. We always need more hands. If you two aren’t doing anything we can just give her to a nurse droid.” 

“Wait,” Rey says. “One of us needs to stay home.”

“I thought–” 

“She still needs us _around,_ ” she insists. “She needs to have, um, a trained Force-sensitive around while she familiarizes herself with it. She might not learn how to connect with it properly otherwise.” 

Stars, she’s doing some high-level bullshitting right now, but she’s doing it well, and Hux doesn’t know enough about the Force to call her out on it. 

“Very well,” he sighs. “A guard will be waiting outside your room tomorrow at seven hours. Be ready.” 

Rey nods, and Hux shoves a whimpering Dee back at her. They sit perfectly still until they hear the door slam shut.

“Is your head okay?” Rey asks as soon as he’s gone. “I can have a look–”

“I’m fine,” he growls, standing up and walking to the refresher.

“Ben wait,” she insists, pursuing him with Dee in her arms. 

“I’m fine,” he repeats, slamming the door roughly. 

He stays there, his bleeding head resting on the cool synthetic stone of the counter even after Rey’s knocks are replaced with Dee’s soft cries.

He’s lasted a week focusing on Dee and nothing else. On how to be a good father or caretaker or whatever he was to her without having a kriffing breakdown or going insane and trying to break them out or anything else. 

And just as he found a moment of happiness that he thought was impossible, as he actual felt _alive_ for the first time in so long, it’s all come crashing down on him again and reminded him that he will never truly be allowed to live again; he has burned that bridge long ago. 

He sinks to the floor, his knees hitting the tile with a painful _thunk._ He can taste his own blood in his mouth, he should do something about that, but he doesn’t have the energy for that. 

He buries his head in his hands and waits for the world to disappear around him, or for his exhaustion to overcome him, whichever comes first.

After perhaps half an hour, he hears a knock on the bathroom door again. “Ben?”

“Just go,” he shouts. 

“Ben, just let me in.” 

“I don’t want to talk.” 

“Me neither. But Dee left her dragon in there earlier and now she wants it.” 

Ben sighs, and looks up enough to see the little red dragon resting on the counter. “Okay, one second.” He wipes the blood off his face with his sleeve, and picks up the plush. He pushes open the door with his foot to see Dee’s grumpy, tired face. Immediately he feels a rush of guilt for leaving her alone out there. 

“Hey, little one,” he whispers. “Hey. It’s gonna be okay.” 

She reaches her arms up to him, though for him or the dragon he’s not certain. He carefully takes her from Rey and tucks the dragon into her embrace. “It’s alright, kid.” 

He doesn’t see Rey smiling at them again when he walks over and sits down on the bed, leaning against the headboard so that he can better support Dee. He waves the dragon in front of her so he can watch her track it with her eyes and grab at it with her little hands, then lets her grab on it and chew on it. After a little while Rey approaches him with a towel and alcohol and cleans the cut on his face, putting a bandage over it and sitting on the mattress next to them. 

It’s once Dee is getting fussy for dinner and he is standing up to get her a bottle that he realizes that somewhere between locking himself away from everyone else and standing up to get a toy Rey had coaxed him out through a combination of caring distance and Dee’s sweet face. 

“You knew that would work, didn’t you?” 

Rey hums as she mixes formula in their kitchenette. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Ben takes the bottle from Rey and gives it to Dee. “We’re going to be okay,” he says softly, though not sure to whom. “Aren’t we?” 

“Maybe,” Rey replies, “Maybe we could.”

But stars, they’ve got a long way to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Mild, nongraphic violence/blood
> 
> Also, in case I didn't make it clear enough, Ben Chewbacca Solo is ~demisexual and demiromantic~ and I am not moving on this topic. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, please like and comment!


	5. We'll Give It A Shot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s a surprise for you, too,” she laughs. “I don’t want to ruin it.” 
> 
> Ben sighs dramatically. “If you must.” 
> 
> Rey laughs again, and ruffles the growing fuzz on Dee’s head. It is longer now, almost properly hair, and jet black. Her eyes, too, are starting to color properly, the hazel of her eyes coming through and the little gold flecks starting to catch the light. Her perfect button nose fits just right on her little head, and a day doesn’t pass where Rey doesn’t see those two little dimples crest up at the corner of her smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, here's another chapter! It's pretty much just 2000 words of domesticity, but don't worry, the angst is returning afresh next chapter!
> 
> Warning: I am halfway through an beginning CS course but barely know anything about computers and know nothing about hacking, so my depictions are vague and probably inaccurate. 
> 
> Check end notes for content warnings. 
> 
> _"We've got to hold on to what we've got  
>  It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not  
> We've got each other and that's a lot for love  
> We'll give it a shot."  
> ~Bon Jovi, Living On A Prayer_

“Honey, I’m home,” Rey says with dry sarcasm, a mockery of their dysfunctional ‘family’ that has slowly evolved over the past month. It’s a phrase she’s only ever heard on HoloNet shows, and it is half humor, half an escape of her bitterness and frustration.

“Hey.” Ben meets her at the door with Dee. She reaches out to ruffle the baby’s hair and kiss her head, guiltily nestling her nose in Ben’s shirt and taking in his smell. “How was work?” 

This, ironically, is completely unironic: Rey spends most of her day working at the factory; Ben had initially insisted that he should be the one to go but Rey had only told that lie to keep Ben with Dee, who she knows would be miserable if he left. 

Occasionally he’ll take a day of work instead of her, when she has something she needs to do like when she was setting up Dee’s crib at the side of the bed, or when she really needs a day to rest. Hux doesn’t mind so long as he knows he’s still in control of them. 

“Someone tried to run today,” Rey mumbles into his chest. “Xe got shot, right in front of everyone.” 

Ben pats her head gently. “Come eat.” 

She doesn’t know how he teases such good food out of the horrible rations they receive, and he maintains it isn’t very good, but it is compared to what she’s used to. Dee is still on all-formula, but going through it hungrily and eagerly, and keeping them busy washing bottles. 

She sits down on the floor and takes the bowl of vegetable soup offered her, trying not to down it all in one gulp. Ben spoons out some for himself and sits down across from her. “Sometimes I just want to get up, make a scene, stop production– half the people there would join me too,– but then I remember little Dee here,” she admits quietly. “And…” She stops herself before she finishes. 

Ben watches her with a measured expression. “And what?” 

“I think about you, too,” she admits. “I can’t abandon you. Either of you.” 

“Don’t do anything rash,” Ben affirms. “We need you.” Their little unit, such as it is, may be highly imperfect, but they’re just learning to function it, and he could not do it without her. 

She leans her head against the wall, letting the cool surface press soothingly into her cheek. “When I’m sitting there, I always think, there has to be some way, some little way, to show them they’re not in charge of me. Not really. Sabotage the equipment, maybe.” She pushes around some vegetables in her bowl. “But that won’t hurt them. It’s going to the troopers, the canon fodder. And they know that, and they know I know that. It’s the perfect crime. I have to help them, but if I don’t they don’t get hurt. And they know I don’t want to let someone else get hurt.”

Ben swears softly, then guiltily looks at Dee, who is just starting to babble properly. “He’s horrible, but maker, he’s clever,” Ben growls. 

“It’s half what makes him so horrible,” she replies, and then they dig into their dinners without another word until they are both finished and full and it is time to feed Dee. 

“I was, um, wondering if you could go in tomorrow?” She asks nervously as she hands him the bottle. “To the factory. I had… a project I wanted to do here.”

“Of course,” Ben replies immediately, giving the bottle to Dee. “What is it?” 

“It’s a surprise.” 

“I think you’ll find me quite capable of keeping the secret,” he says drily, pointing down at the baby. 

“It’s a surprise for you, too,” she laughs. “I don’t want to ruin it.” 

Ben sighs dramatically. “If you must.” 

Rey laughs again, and ruffles the growing fuzz on Dee’s head. It is longer now, almost properly hair, and jet black. Her eyes, too, are starting to color properly, the hazel of her eyes coming through and the little gold flecks starting to catch the light. Her perfect button nose fits just right on her little head, and a day doesn’t pass where Rey doesn’t see those two little dimples crest up at the corner of her smile. 

It’s becoming harder to deny that she is their daughter. But now Rey finds herself less averse to the idea: she bears no love for their current situation, but Dee is a sweet baby who bears no blame, and if they happen to share DNA– well, that doesn’t seem to matter as much anymore. 

She rests a hand on Dee’s head, and a cheek on Ben’s chest, and lets herself enjoy this moment, one that becomes increasingly important for her in its mundanity, and Ben leans onto her head and neither of them acknowledge what it is or what it isn’t, only that it’s what they need.

*

“Alright little one, time for bed,” Ben grunts, gently pushing Rey aside as he stands up. 

“I can put her down,” Rey offers. “You have to be up early tomorrow, you should go to bed.”

“You’re sure?” He knows Rey certainly can take care of Dee, but she rarely volunteers to do extra– not that he minds either way, it’s just unusual. 

“I’m sure,” and she gently takes the baby from him. “Come on, let’s get you ready for bed, okay sweetheart?” 

Ben watches her take Dee to get burped and changed before getting up himself to put on pajamas and get into bed. Soon after, she returns and sets an already-asleep Dee into the half-cradle on his side of the bed, and then gets into bed on the other side. 

“G’night,” Rey mumbles into the pillow. 

“Good night.” 

Rey’s steady breathing from the other side of the bed slowly lulls him to sleep, same as it has every other night this past month. 

_I haven’t had a single nightmare this whole time,_ he thinks suddenly. He has not gone this long peacefully sleeping since… since before he can remember. 

_Me neither,_ he feels Rey’s thoughts bleed back. 

She rolls over so her chest is pressed into his back, her hand over his chest, so she can feel his steady heartbeat as they fall asleep.

* * *

Ben wakes up early the next morning to get ready to work and still have time to give Dee her breakfast, leaving with barely a minute to spare having spent every last second with her. 

And now Rey remembers why she always feels guilty to ask him for this, because Dee is bawling the second he leaves, refusing to let Rey or her dragon comfort her, even as Rey rocks and soothes her with every soft words of comfort she can think of or has heard Ben use. 

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she sighs. “Hey. He’ll be back later. Come on, we can have fun too.” 

After a little coaxing, she finally calms down, and lets Rey give her a pacifier and wrap her in a little blanket. 

“Now, we’ve got to make a special surprise for your favorite person, okay?” 

They’ve got a small HoloPad in their room, most of the functions are deactivated and they are only supposed to use it to read about how to take care of the baby and to request new supplies, but she has been studying it and she thinks she could hack into it to reactivate some of the functions. They’ve done a sloppy job on the outside at least, she’s already scraped the cover off the camera with her nail, and today she wants to see if she can turn off some of the restrictions placed on it. 

The only active utilities on it are a decent-sized library of reading materials (Ben must use these if he has free time while she’s working, she thinks), a place to request supplies, and a drawing pad for scribbling down notes or something. 

Well, she sets to work, making a nest of blankets for her and Dee in a corner near the partition, figuring this will be the hardest place to supervise her if there is surveillance, and gathers the rudimentary tools (mostly cutlery bent into different shapes) that she intends to use. 

“They didn’t do a very careful job with this, Dee,” Rey remarks as she unscrews a panel on the back. “Of course, they removed the antenna entirely, so I don’t think we can get any sort of signal, that was probably their biggest concern. But they pretty much just flipped a switch on these other controls. I bet we can get most of them back.” 

Dee babbles back, and Rey smiles. She and Ben narrated to her more or less everything they did, to give her a better chance to hear them talk– after all, she wouldn’t learn if she never heard them talk. The idea of being there to hear Dee talk is equal parts exciting and terrifying, but either way, it’s nice to have someone to talk to who will not judge anything you say. 

Dee watches with confused interest as Rey toys with the wiring inside the HoloPad, and is asleep by the time she starts hacking into the actual code of the machine. It feels good to be working with her hands again on something that’s not monotonous, something that is alive underneath her hands and something that actually requires a little thought. She feels energized, and while she feeds Dee twice she realizes she’s barely even had water for herself until late into the afternoon. 

“Ben’s going to be mad at me if I don’t eat,” Rey mumbles. He can always tell when she hasn’t, too, when he sends her off to the factory with an energy bar and she doesn’t have the energy, ironically, to eat during the ten-minute break. Then he just gently coaxes her to eat whatever he’s fixed for dinner, and she takes his kindness with contemplatie silence. 

As much as she’s not used to having someone to care for, she’s even less used to having someone care for her. 

She shouldn’t be pining after him while he’s working, she thinks, it could trigger something in the bond, which is the last thing she needs. 

Instead, she tears open a back of dried fruit with her teeth and eats it while putting a noodle soup on the stove to be done by the time Ben is home. 

Once it’s simmering, she pulls the HoloPad out and does some final touches on the new functions she’s installed. Without a connection, there is still very little it can do, but it does exactly what she wants it to. 

“Smile, Dee,” Rey laughs, holding out a stuffed dragon to get the baby’s attention, and hitting the button just as she does. “Ben’s going to love this,” she whispers, kissing Dee’s head. 

She toys around with the newly-unlocked camera for a few minutes, practicing getting good shots and then practicing getting good ones of Dee, and making sure they save to the HoloPad’s memory. 

Just as she’s finishing up, she hears Ben come inside, and Dee starts wriggling out of control at the sound of his voice; she goes to the door as quickly as she can to surrender her into his arms. 

“Hey there,” Ben laughs. “Hey, yes, it’s me, yes. Did you have a nice day with Rey?” 

Dee babbles back, and Rey laughs with them as he bounces Dee against his hip. “We did,” she confirms. “How was your day?”

He shrugs, and Rey leaves it be. It’s clear he’s missed Dee, so she serves dinner in the kitchen and leaves him be to sit with her while they eat. 

“Come in here,” Rey says once their dinner is finished. “I have something I want to show you.” 

Ben follows her into the bedroom (where there’s better lighting) with Dee and she pulls out the HoloPad. 

Ben looks momentarily… worried? But she moves on and opens it up to the photo album to show him the pictures of Dee. 

Ben looks at them for several moments before asking her, “How?” 

She squeezes his hand, it’s easier to communicate discreetly when they are touching. _I hacked into it to unlock the functions that were shot off. I thought we could use it to take photos of Dee._

_This is amazing,_ he says, and if it wasn’t worth it already it is to see the smile splitting his face. 

_I saw some data sticks at the factory, I think it would be easy to skim a few and download the photos so that we could keep them when… when we leave._

“I love it.” 

He spends the rest of the evening playing with Dee and the camera, until she gets fussy and it’s time to settle her down to bed.

“‘Night Dee,” Rey says softly, stopping by the crib before going to her side of the bed. “I had a nice day with you. But don’t worry, you’ll have your dad to yourself tomorrow.” And as she finishes the sentence it dawns on her what she just said. The word had been instinctively on the tip of her tongue all day but replaced with ‘Ben’ every time she actually spoke– until now. “I mean, you’ll have–” 

Ben puts a hand on her wrist. “It’s okay.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” he says, “Yes. I… I like it.” 

“Alright,” Rey says. “You’ll get to play with your dad tomorrow, sweetheart.” 

“Goodnight,” Ben whispers, and she slips into the bed pressed against his back again. 

“Sweet dreams.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Mentions of gun violence, factory labor
> 
> Well, despite the song for this chapter, we are not halfway there, and I still have a lot to put these three through. But I'm enjoying writing it, and even if I don't respond to your comments it makes me so happy to see your feedback. Have a great week, lots of love!


	6. Hope Your World Is Kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey has a secret. 
> 
> Admittedly, Rey has many secrets. She has kept secrets from Plutt, from Luke, from Ben, from Leia, and even from Finn. 
> 
> But this isn’t a bad secret, she likes having this one. 
> 
> Dee is starting to sleep through the night better, but she still wakes up sometimes, and isn’t always willing to go back to bed. And when he’s certain Rey is asleep, sometimes Ben will sing Dee a lullaby. And Rey _isn’t_ always asleep, but realizing that he won’t sing if he thinks she’s awake, she’ll pretend to be asleep just so she can listen. 
> 
> And she doesn’t know where the lullabies come from, who he learned them from, but they are beautiful, and his voice is beautiful, and she could listen to him all day if only he were not so shy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, sorry, this chapter meant to get out sooner but I've had school stress, online piano competitions, complicated gender identity feelings, and got into a new Mandalorian ship over the weekend. Oops. 
> 
> But, it's here now! Please enjoy me avoiding learning anything about star wars and instead making stuff up to suit my needs!

Rey has a secret. 

Admittedly, Rey has many secrets. She has kept secrets from Plutt, from Luke, from Ben, from Leia, and even from Finn. 

But this isn’t a bad secret, she likes having this one. 

Dee is starting to sleep through the night better, but she still wakes up sometimes, and isn’t always willing to go back to bed. And when he’s certain Rey is asleep, sometimes Ben will sing Dee a lullaby. And Rey _isn’t_ always asleep, but realizing that he won’t sing if he thinks she’s awake, she’ll pretend to be asleep just so she can listen. 

And she doesn’t know where the lullabies come from, who he learned them from, but they are beautiful, and his voice is beautiful, and she could listen to him all day if only he were not so shy. 

She hears sweet and plaintive lullabies: 

_Don’t give me love,  
Don’t give me faith,   
Wisdom, nor pride,   
Give innocence instead._

She hears old love songs: 

_True that I saw her hair like  
The branch of a tree  
Willow dancing' on air before covering me  
Under cotton and calicos  
Over canopy dabbled long ago._

And she hears sweet, gentle songs, that sound too personal to even put a name too. 

_Auri in the night  
Sighs "I hope your world is kind"  
As the dawn comes, and by her side  
He sits down and starts to play._

And then she keeps it a secret from Ben, because he thinks Dee is the only one who’s ever heard his voice, and does not know how beautiful it is. And Rey doesn’t want to stop hearing it. 

Then he comes back to bed between the two of them, and she curls up against him, and all is quiet again.

* * *

Ben seems more nervous than usual one day when Rey comes back from the factory. 

She kisses Dee on the head and turns to Ben. “How was your day?” 

“Dee broke her dragon,” he replies, “So there will be great angst while I look for a sewing kit.”

“Poor baby,” Rey sighs. “You have other toys, you know.” 

Dee smiles back innocently, and Ben returns to the kitchen to serve dinner while Rey shrugs off her coat. 

He hands her some flatbread and vegetables, which she tears into eagerly; it’s been so long since they’ve had flour in their rations. 

“I was wondering if I could work instead tomorrow,” Ben blurts out. 

“I, um–” Ah yes, in her eagerness to be home and to eat, it had slipped her mind. “The factory is closed for now,” she admits. 

He sets his fork down. “Did something happen?” 

“There’s not enough troops,” she replies. “Between defections and losses… we’re making armor for bodies that don’t exist. So they need to restructure the equipment to manufacture aircraft before we start up again.” 

He only nods in reply. 

“It’s good to know where the two sides stand right now, even if it’s only through the grapevine,” Rey suggests. 

He nods again, without speaking. 

“And we can spend more time with Dee, for a few days. 

“Yeah,” he says with a slight smile, though his eyes remain down. 

Rey notes Ben’s silence as she takes another bite. “Is something wrong?” 

“No.” 

She sighs, setting down her fork. It’s like interrogating a clam. “Talk to me.” 

He pushes food around on his plate. “It’s nothing.” 

“It’s clearly not, Ben. You don’t have to tell me, but I don’t think we should keep secrets from each other.” 

“I’m n–”

But Dee clearly senses the rising tension in the room, as she drops a pacifier out of her mouth and begins to cry. 

Rey reaches for the pacifier, which dropped by her chair, and rinses it off while Ben pulls Dee out of her high chair. 

“Shh, fussy girl,” he croons and when she hears that voice Rey almost forgets what they were about to argue about.

She returns the pacifier to Dee and looks at Ben expectantly. 

“It’s nothing,” he repeats. “I just wanted a day where I had– I could just do something monotonous. Not think. That’s it.”

“And not spend it with Dee?” Ben works when he has to, but she can always tell he hates spending the day away– he worries about them too much. 

“I”m going to go get her her dinner,” Ben mumbles, a poor excuse to get out of conversation when their place is so small. 

Still, Rey leaves him, hoping she can spring the subject again later, maybe tomorrow when they’ll be stuck with each other. She finishes her dinner, and brings Ben the rest of his while he feeds Dee. He seems relieved that she’s let the subject drop, and they continue quietly through the rest of their night.

* * *

Ben’s tension is palpable all the next day. Quickly, he finds a sewing kit and hides away in the bedroom to repair Dee’s dragon, asking Rey to keep her busy so she doesn’t get herself pricked trying to crawl into his lap. 

She suspects he really just wants to be alone. 

She does not begrudge him that. 

“Come on, honey, your dad’s busy,” Rey sighs, carrying away a reluctant Dee. 

Rey spends her day off trying to nap when Dee naps, or else updating Dee’s photo albums (she’s getting big now, and her funny crinkly-eyes smile is only getting cuter). 

(It’s quite possible she really does have Rey’s eyes). 

She tries reading the few books they have, too, but mostly she worries about Ben. Ben, who is usually nothing if not forthcoming with her, suddenly closed off. 

She goes into the bedroom to talk to him, finding him tying off the knot on the stitch in the stuffed dragon. “Hey,” he says. “I was just going to bring this back to Dee.” 

“Did you hear that?” Rey turns to Dee and carries her over to Ben. “Look who’s back?” 

Dee giggles happily and takes the dragon, giving it all the cuddles she’s withheld in the past day. For a moment, they both forget their problems to watch this sweet vignette

Still holding Dee, Rey sits down on the bed next to Ben, who has realized that without his task to distract him, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

“I… Did you want to talk?” Rey asks slowly. “About… whatever’s bothering you.” 

“It’s…” He shakes his head, looking truly torn, and seems like he is about to say something noncommittal, when suddenly Rey remembers:

“Your birthday,” she realizes suddenly. 

She feels him tense up next to her. “What?” 

“Today is your birthday, isn’t it?” 

After a long breath, he finally asks, “How did you know?” 

“I was… I was helping your mom clean out her desk a while ago. I found a card, something she’d sent you for your birthday, something you must’ve left when you went to the temple. If I remember the day right… it must’ve been today?” 

Finally, he nods, almost imperceptibly. 

“Happy birthday?”

“Don’t,” he says softly. “Please. Just don’t.” 

“Why not?” Rey doesn’t know when her birthday is, never has. She just picked a day that marked the start of her year, and that was when she was a year older. She thinks she’d be happy to know when she was born. 

“Because the universe has a funny kriffing sense of humor, that’s why,” he snaps. 

Dee stirs restlessly in Rey’s arms, still happy though her peace could easily be broken. Her presence in the Force is growing stronger, and while it means Ben and Rey can sense her feelings more strongly, so she can sense theirs. Which means when tensions are high, well, it does no wonders for her sense of calm. 

“You need to talk to me,” she insists. 

He leans back slowly onto the bed. “It’s– it was– it was my dad’s birthday too,” he says finally. “Weird coincidence, huh?” 

_I’m not sure I believe in coincidences anymore,_ Rey thinks. 

“I don’t know why–” Ben says in a shaky voice. “Why, why it was–” He shakes his head again. “It just felt like, for so long, no matter how messed up everything else was just then, he’d… he’d managed to make that today pretty okay, somehow. For both of us.” 

“You really loved him, didn’t you?” She sees all of the sudden why he wore the mask: his face betrays every flicker of emotion that crosses it. As he nods, she sees a tear escape the corner of his eyes. 

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Ben.”

“I wish I could be,” he mumbles. _It would hurt less that way._

Rey is silent for a long time before she finds the right words to respond. “He’d be proud of you. He would. How you’ve… how you’ve changed, grown… you’ve become such a good father. All he wanted for you was for you to come home. I don’t think he cared what it took.” 

“I’m not sure I could ever come home now,” Ben mumbles. “Not after… everything.” 

She shakes her head. “Your father knew what he was doing when he went onto that bridge, Ben. He knew what could have happened. Don’t let all that be for nothing.” 

At some point in all this she has come much closer to him, so close they are touching. 

“If we did get out– _when _we get out,” he says shakily, “What would happen to Dee?”__

__“We’d bring her with us,” she replies with certainty, “And– I don’t know. We’d find a home for her.”_ _

__“I couldn’t keep her, could I?”_ _

__Rey sits up a little, looking at Ben, and at Dee who still looks at him with such love, even though she is so young. Rey had always hoped she could bring him back from the Dark, but in the end, it wasn’t her who’d done it at all. No, it was this surprising, amazing little girl who had made him realize that, come hell or high water, there was at least one other person in the galaxy who needed him._ _

__She wishes, now, she could feel the same way._ _

__“Of course you could. You’re her father.” And as yet, Rey loves Dee dearly, but cannot picture wanting to build that kind of life when she leaves this place. If Ben were to make a home for Dee, though, she thinks it would be wonderful for both of them._ _

__The thought makes her very lonely._ _

__“Maybe you should get some sleep, Ben,” Rey suggests. She knows he did not sleep peacefully last night._ _

__“I don’t think I could.”_ _

__“Close your eyes,” Rey insists. She has an idea, and maybe it is not a good idea, but it is an idea and she thinks it is what he needs._ _

__Ben hesitates before closing his eyes, and Rey holds his hand as she begins._ _

__She knows now where the lullaby must have come from, who it must have come from. Certainly it is odd that he might have known it, but she feels it for certain._ _

__And slowly, she begins to sing:_ _

_____ _

___Every night I see  
The "Once upon a time-life" greeting me  
But you can't buy me back with a memory  
With your brazen summer sun._ _ _

___Every night I sound_  
My low "I hope your world is kind"  
Over the scape that fills the night  
Something fair sleeps in your world._ _

__And as she finishes, he is already asleep._ _

__She thinks she must fall in love with him a little more just then._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben, who almost certainly knows that Rey is awake: * sings love songs to make sure she hears *
> 
> Anyway I could have researched lullabies but instead I went with the songs I was listening to anyways which are, in order of appearance: 
> 
> The Crow, the Owl, and the Dove - Nightwish  
> Would That I - Hozier  
> Hope Your World Is Kind - Auri
> 
> Thanks for reading! Your comments are my life, have a great weekend.


	7. Raving Harlequin's Gigantic Toys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Fifteen minutes,” Rey says suddenly a week later. “I can buy you fifteen minutes.” 
> 
> “Fifteen minutes of what?” 
> 
> “Outside time for Dee,” she replies. “I’ve been watching guard schedules, checking the hallways and the doors. I think I can safely get you outside for fifteen minutes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter? Already? I know, amazing. But your next update won't be for a little while because I have a quiz, a test, and a presentation all coming up and I want to write a Valentine's one-shot. So, feast your eyes on this for the time being. 
> 
> Content warnings in the end notes. 
> 
> _The nightingale is still locked in the cage  
>  The deep breath I took still poisons my lungs  
> An old oak sheltering me from the blue  
> Sun bathing on its dead frozen leaves_
> 
> _A catnap in the ghost town of my heart  
>  She dreams of storytime and the river ghosts  
> Of mermaids, of Whitman's and the Ride  
> Raving harlequin's gigantic toys_
> 
> _~Song of Myself, Nightwish_

Here is where Dee is at six months old: 

Her hair is getting longer and curlier and her eyes are full with color now. Her chubby hands and feet are constantly in her mouth, and her babbling is almost coherent now. They are both excited and nervous for her first words. 

She is very close to crawling, rocking back and forth on her hands and knees, and Rey can’t imagine what she will be like once she can move around. 

She really is sleeping through the night regularly now, which is a huge relief to both of them. 

But just before they can enjoy that, teething starts, which significantly disturbs their peace. Now she is chewing on everything she can reach, except her teething rings, and her gums are painfully swollen. 

And still, she is playful and cuddly and sweet, and she has Ben wrapped around her finger, and Rey is steadily getting more entranced. 

And here is where Rey is after three months as a prisoner: 

She’s exhausted. She misses the Resistance. She misses her friends, she misses everything. There are days when it feels impossible to get out of bed and yet she does it again, and again, every time. 

But, she has Dee. Dee, a sweet little baby who couldn’t possibly know how messed up her life is because it’s all she knows, because she has food and toys and two people to take care of her. Dee, who reminds her, that there are things worth pushing on for. 

And she has Ben. Ben, who she feels like she knows everything and nothing about, who holds her when she wakes up amid nightmares, whom she always does the same for. Ben, who makes her every living moment a thousand times more complicated and yet she is certain she could not live without. 

Sometimes she wishes she could just take all of them, herself and Ben and Dee and her friends, and hide them away from the world where no one can touch them anymore. 

But, she supposes, those aren’t the things that make life worth living. 

And as for Ben, this is just another version of the captivity he’s always lived in, except now the stakes are higher, because he has someone to protect. He has a goal. He has ideas, and stars, for the first time he can remember he has _hope._ It is weak, like the flame of a candle, but it is there, still flickering even when it seems like it is about to go out. 

However, what he still doesn’t have is a plan to get them out of there, or for what he would do once they did. His list more or less started and stopped at _Stay with Dee, protect Rey._

But, did he really need so much more?

* * *

When Rey comes home, Ben appears to be asleep in a chair after a long night with Dee, and the baby is curled in his lap, no doubt also making up for a sleepless night. She ruffles both of their hair without waking either and goes into their small conservator to look for leftover food. It is little domesticate moments like these that both please her and confuse her to no end. 

She eats her lukewarm rice while watching them, their breathing out of sync yet somehow matching, their identical long eyelash occasionally fluttering before returning to peaceful stillness. 

It is nearly half an hour before Ben wakes up, and with him Dee starts squirming and waving her little fists. 

He sees Rey cleaning up from her dinner. “Why didn’t you wake up?”

“You looked like you needed the sleep,” she replies. “I just got some leftovers, don’t worry about it. Do you want me to feed her?” 

Ben looks at her, carrying herself around so confidently, and wondering suddenly when she became this confident. She no longer needs his comfort when she comes home from work, no longer needs his reassurance to care for Dee. 

And he is happy for her, that she is stronger and happier and feels better about what she can do. 

But he misses being able to hold her. He misses feeling needed. He misses feeling like they had something, something special. 

He realizes maybe she does not need him anymore, or even worse, that she never did.

“Ben? Are you okay?”

He’s getting worse about zoning out, if that’s even possible. “Yes, just tired.” 

“Here, let me take her.” Rey takes Dee to be fed while Ben takes the last of the leftover rice. 

Ben forces himself out of his reverie as he watches Rey feed the baby. Sometimes, he feels like he’s in control of himself, at least a little, but there are times like this when he just feels… he doesn’t know. Being so close to Rey but feeling so isolated does no wonders for his peace. 

“Alright, there you go, back to daddy.” Rey sets Dee down in his lap, and begins babbling eagerly to him. 

“Hey little one, did you have a nice dinner?”

“Hair,” Rey warns as Dee reaches up to play with her second favorite toy. Ben sighs and pulls a tie off his wrist, pulling his hair back into a short ponytail, as it’s become too long to be manageable. 

Ben nuzzles her hair gently, inhaling the baby smell she still has. She is relaxed in his arms, her hand in her smiling mouth. Rey goes to shower, and as she steps out he can smell the flowery scent of her soap wafting with the steam. Flowers… it’s been so long since… 

“Dee’s never been outside,” he realizes suddenly. 

Rey looks over to them. “She hasn’t, has she?”

He shakes his head. “For maybe a minute, once, but other than that, I don’t think she’s ever been outside.” 

“Poor thing.” Rey strokes Dee’s hair. She has known the opposite– to know only the barest of shelters, to live practically her whole life outside, but Dee does not know, has never known, what it is like to breathe fresh air, and does not even know that she has missed it. 

“Stars, I wish… I wish we could,” he says lamely. 

“Someday,” Rey promises, leaning her head against this shoulder.

“Someday,” he repeats, tucking a stray hair behind her ear.

* * *

“Fifteen minutes,” Rey says suddenly a week later. “I can buy you fifteen minutes.” 

“Fifteen minutes of what?” 

“Outside time for Dee,” she replies. “I’ve been watching guard schedules, checking the hallways and the doors. I think I can safely get you outside for fifteen minutes.” 

“Safely?” 

“For you two. I’d have to cause the distraction. There’s a door just outside the room, dash outside and hide around the corner, I think I can delay them from finding you for twenty minutes, so you should come back early just to be safe. Just trust me, Ben.” 

“It’s not worth getting you in danger.” 

“I’ll be fine, just trust me. It’ll make Dee so happy.”

“Let me do it,” he insists. “Whatever the distraction. You can go out with Dee.”

She shakes her head. “You can’t. You’re not small enough to fit in the vents. Please, Ben, I know what I’m doing. We have no idea how long we’ll be stuck here, she deserves to see sunlight at least once.” Let alone the fact that she would not remember it. That it would only be fifteen minutes. She needs to feel like she is doing something worthwhile again, like she is not just a pawn. 

And she suspects Ben needs to see some sunlight almost as badly as Dee does. 

No matter what he says, it will be worth it. 

“Okay?” 

“Okay,” Ben gives in. “Fifteen minutes, you have to tell me if anything starts to go wrong, got it?”

Rey grins. “Whatever you say.”

And so the next day, just before sunrise, Rey climbs up into the vents, armed with a knife made of a spoon handle she sharpened against the bathroom tile. And once Ben gives her a gentle prod through the bond, she stabs a hole through the thin metal to see, and starts to make as much noise as she can to draw them away. 

She doesn’t have time to wonder if Ben is succeeding as she scootches as quickly as she can through the vent, trying to draw them as much as she can before she reaches her turn-around point. 

For several minutes, it seems to be going quite well. 

Then a guard wises up and shoots at a panel in the vents. 

And though the bullet misses her, the whole panel falls out, dumping her onto the floor. 

She is caught red handed. 

And before she can choose between fight or flight, binders are being clamped on her wrists and she is dragged up onto her knees, her head to the floor. 

She tries to clue Ben in, that she’s been caught, that he needs to hide, maybe even run, and can only pray that he can hear her. 

Her heart sinks when she sees Ben being led by the arm, also cuffed, with Dee in tow by another guard. 

“We went to check for animals outside,” the guard growls. “Found ‘em instead, think she was trying to bust ‘em out.” 

_I’m sorry,_ she thinks desperately as she looks Ben in the eyes. 

Ben only returns her mournful gaze, desperate for whatever is going to happen to Dee. 

The guards have already paged Hux, and he is there within minutes. Her sadness is replaced with pure rage to see his face. This man, who has subjected so much pain onto her and Ben and Dee. 

“Well, well, what have we here?” He asks with a sickening smirk. “A little family adventure?” 

“Fuck you,” Rey hisses through her teeth. 

He stares down at her. “I thought you would know better than to risk your _family_ like this, he hisses softly. “Then again, the Jedi never have been very good with loyalty, scavenger.” 

Ben struggles against his bonds to run at Hux, but is hit in the cheek with the butt of a blaster. 

“You’ll have to be punished for this little _escapade_ ,” Hux growls, kneeling to look her in the eye. “I suppose the little girl was what inspired it?” 

“Don’t hurt her,” Rey pleads.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” he growls. “Clearly you aren’t raising her properly.” 

“Please,” Rey sobs as one of the guards pulls out some kind of awful-looking instrument. “She’s just a baby.” 

“You should have thought of that before you decided you could prance about like you owned this place,” he hisses, and Rey and Ben watch in powerless horror as the man slices a diagonal gash across Dee’s face. 

_“No!”_ Rey shrieks, while Ben is too horrified to even speak. “Please, please, just take me instead, please don’t hurt her.” 

“You instead?” he says as if pondering it, though inside Rey knows this is what he wanted all along. 

“Please,” she sobs. “Anything, just please don’t hurt her.”

“Rey, no,” Ben says sharply, and she looks up at him in shock as he continues. “You don’t want her, if there’s someone to punish, it’s me.” 

Rey shakes her head, but it does not matter anyways, because Hux immediately brushes him off. “You’re far too used to playing the punching bag. I want to teach you a _lesson_.” 

Rey sobs weakly, the dread of what is coming weighing heavy, but more pained to see Dee bleeding and hurt and not be able to do anything about it. 

“Get up.” 

A guard drags Rey to her feet, and she locks eyes with Ben as she is led away. 

_Don’t be afraid,_ his eyes seem to tell her. _I’ll be here for you. I promise._

Dee wails softly and reaches out for Rey; the guard slaps back her hand. 

Rey’s throat is tight with tears as she is dragged down the long hall, and she cannot speak but to whimper a soft _”I love you”_ after they are long out of earshot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Blood, injuries, references to torture, swearing
> 
> Sorry I guess? We have some angst up ahead so be prepared. But with hurt comes comfort and I can't have angst without fluff. So it can only be so bad I guess? 
> 
> Thanks for your comments AND OVER 100 KUDOS, they give me life. Have a great week!


	8. Walking The Wire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey cuties, I'm back! We're going to be getting into some real content here (I think). When I end up writing the chapters, though, they usually end up as pure fluff. Oh well. 
> 
> This is my time to say that I know very little about babies, the last time I saw one was when my cousin had a baby like 6 years ago. Dee should probably be at least starting solids by now but I'm very lazy and my search history already thinks I'm pregnant. 
> 
> Anyway, get ready for some good husband Ben. Check the end notes for content warnings, end enjoy!
> 
> _Oh, I'll take your hand when thunder roars  
>  And I'll hold you close, I'll stay the course  
> I promise you from up above  
> That we'll take what comes, take what comes, love  
> ~Walking the Wire, Imagine Dragons_

Ben is in a haze as he is hauled back to his room, when Dee is returned to him. She is screaming, and blood is running down her face, and he can feel his panic slowly rising. 

He takes her into the ‘fresher, and rifles through the decently-stocked medicine cabinet, finding some antiseptic and bacta patches. Laying Dee down on a towel, he wipes the blood away from the cut and is relieved to find that, despite all the blood, it’s fairly shallow, and the bleeding stops quickly. 

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” he whispers, cleaning out the cut and sticking bacta patches over it. “You’re gonna be okay.” The wound probably won’t even scar. She won’t match him, he thinks wryly. 

But him, he is not going to be fine. Not while he is thinking about whatever they are doing to Rey. He hasn’t been able to feel her in the Force since they took her away, hopefully because she is blocking him out to protect him and Dee, and not anything worse. 

_Rey…_ She is strong, he knows, but he does not know that she’s ever been tortured. Not the way Hux will, anyways. He wishes he could send her any or all of his strength, anything to help her, anything to keep her safe. 

That was all he wanted, to keep them safe. And now he has failed. 

Dee begins to whimper again, reaching up towards him, her face looking even more forlorn now that her face is lopsided with the bandages. He picks her up carefully, holding her against his chest. 

He does not deserve to call himself her father. 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he whispers, stroking her hair. 

Dee knows nothing one way or the other. She feels safe now that her father has her. She is still scared, and rather tired, but she can drift to sleep, if not entirely peacefully, in his arms. 

He lays her down in the crib gently so he can spend the next two hours agonizing over what must be happening to Rey. 

Hux wouldn’t kill her, would he? Surely he wants her alive. Surely, if he wanted either of them dead, it would be Ben. 

It shouldn’t take him this long to _send a message._

And that is when Ben realizes, this is meant to be his torture to. To see Rey suffer, or rather not see it, and be forced to speculate on it. Because Hux knows Ben is no stranger to pain. That he would not easily suffer from it. That there is only one thing now that can hurt him, and Hux knows exactly what that is. 

The bastard is smarter than Ben ever gave him credit for. 

Finally, after the longest two hours of Ben’s life, he hears the door open, and Rey is tossed into the room. He rushes forward to catch her before she hits the floor. 

She wraps her arm weakly around his neck and buries her head in his shoulder, too hurt, too exhausted to even cry. 

He knows the feeling. 

“Alright, love, it’s going to be okay,” he whispers, delicately picking her up. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” 

He sets her down on the floor of the ‘fresher so he can look at her injuries better.

Her face is mottled with bruises, like she’s been punched. The back of her shirt is torn and bloody. 

She curls up into a ball on the floor and squeezes her eyes shut. She is clearly in pain, but seems exhausted more than anything else. 

“Stay awake, love,” he whispers. He doesn’t want her falling unconscious until he can gauge how bad her injuries are. “I’m going to take your shirt off, okay?” 

She nods, and he pulls her shirt over her head: there is nothing intimate, nothing sensual about it, it is only saddening to see her like this. His beautiful, strong Rey so hurt and broken. 

“It’s alright, love,” he whispers, slowly washing out the wounds. It is a mix of burns and cuts, but it does not look like she has lost too much blood. She whimpers softly when he touches them, but stays still and allows him to patch her up. 

On the surface, he can be calm and systematic about this, but inside he is a dangerous cocktail of emotions, of worry and anger and some other feelings he can’t quite recognize. 

“I’ll be right back,” he whispers once she is sufficiently patched up, and he is confident she’s not in any danger. He finds a spare shirt of his, looser so it’s more comfortable over her bandages, and takes it back to her, helping her into it. 

“How do you feel?” 

“I want to see Dee,” she mumbles, the first thing she’s said since coming back. 

Of course she should see Dee (who is still in bed). “Can I pick you up?” 

She nods, and he scoops her up again and sets her down in the bed, next to Dee’s crib. Ben carefully sets the baby down her lap. 

Dee stirs, whimpering softly as she wakes up, reaching up towards Rey’s bruised face, and Ben worries that neither of them will be well enough for this but Rey simply holds her close and tells her, “It’s okay, sweetheart, mommy’s got you,” and calms her down. 

Once Dee is settled, Ben hands Rey some pills and a glass of water. “They’re for the pain,” he explains. “And to help you sleep.” 

She washes down the pills and cautiously leans back against the pillows. He thinks she has fallen asleep when she asks, “Did she like it?”

Ben is momentarily confused. “Did she like what?” 

“Going outside. Did Dee like it?”

“Yes. Yes, yes she did.” 

A small smile spreads across her face. “I’m glad.” 

“I… I can show you. If you’d like.” He offers his hand. 

She takes it, and he gently sends the image into her mind: 

_It is windy outside, but not too cold. Dee looks around in amazement, having never experienced sunlight or wind before. Ben carefully watches theri back, but delights in her wide-eyed wonder nonetheless._

_He stops to lean against a wall and a beautiful, bright blue butterfly flutters past. Dee reaches towards it, and to his surprise it actually alights on her hand for a moment. They both watch, still with surprise, as it rests its wings before moving on._

_Then they hear a door slam behind them._

Ben quickly pulls away before she can see the rest of the memory. She is now dozing peacefully with Dee in her arms. 

It’s best for her to sleep through the worst part of the healing he knows. And perhaps there is something else he should be doing, but he can’t bring himself to leave her, and he lays down next to her and Dee, holding both of them gently, until he too is asleep.

* * *

She won’t pretend the pain didn’t bother her. She has been in pain before, significant pain, but the drawn-out, calculated attacks were something entirely different. It hurt, and it hurt a lot, and she would not try to say otherwise. 

But worse than that was the total sense of powerlessness that came with it. The pointlessness. 

Because when she has been tortured for information, there has been something to hold out for. Something to keep her grounded, a goal. And when she has endured battle-wounds, those have had a purpose, too. Even when she felt like she was about to drop from hunger, she had something in mind to work for. 

But for this, she just had to lie there and wait it out. There was nothing she could use to stabilize herself, or even to remind herself why she was there. 

She felt useless. 

And she felt like she had failed, failed to protect her baby, failed to protect her _family_. 

When she finally stumbles into their room and collapses into Ben’s arms, all she wants to do is sleep, but he insists on watching her and nursing her and poking at her injuries first. She even seems to remember him calling her _love_ , but then again, she was very tired. 

But finally, he lets her go to bed, and lets her see Dee, and look her in the eyes for the first time as her mother. 

And now, she knows, she must keep them safe, and keep them _together,_ at all costs. 

And how she wishes she’d known sooner.

* * *

When Ben wakes up, he expects Rey still to be asleep, or at least still in bed, but she and Dee have both left. 

He finds Rey sitting on the bathroom floor, her back resting against the cool tiles, Dee drinking her formula in Rey’s lap. 

“You should be in bed,” Ben sighs. 

“I’m okay,” she replies, but she is visibly in pain. 

“No, you’re not,” he sighs. “You’ll heal faster if you rest.”

“We can’t let him win,” she hisses back. “I don’t want to stay down.” 

“That doesn’t mean you should hurt yourself even more,” he growls. “Let me take Dee, _you need to rest.”_

She pushes him away angrily. “The factory reopens in two days, and I will be there, and I will _not_ let him know he has hurt us.” 

He knows why Rey wants this, and he too would hate to give Hux the satisfaction of knowing he has gotten to them. But it is painfully obvious how much she is hurting, and he can’t see her like this. “I know, love, I know. But you’ll only be able to do that if you let me take care of you.”

Rey is not used to letting people take care of her. She is used to licking her wounds alone, and forcing herself to be strong until her body finishes patching itself up and she feels better again. She is tired of feeling weak already, and she wants it to end. She wants to feel like she can do these things, feed Dee and walk around and be awake. She doesn’t want Ben to nurse her and coddle her and treat her like she is made of glass. 

“Rey.” 

She tucks her head back down so she does not have to make eye contact, so she can go back to feeding Dee. 

“Rey, look at me.” 

Guiltily, she looks up at him through her lashes, still angry but unable to resent his tenderness. 

“You don’t always need to be strong.” 

_Yes, I do,_ she thinks but does not say. She has always needed to be strong, and she always will. There is no one to look out for her but herself. And even if it feels like there is, for a little bit… it will not last. Nothing good, it seems, can last. 

“You are strong, and you can take care of yourself. But there’s nothing wrong with letting someone else take care of you for a little bit.” 

“No one will take care of me,” she hisses back. 

“I will.” 

He looks at her with those serious, dark eyes that seem to show both the very depth of his soul and to bore directly into hers. It is hard to look at them, yet impossible to look away. 

“I’ll take care of you. When you need someone, I’ll take care of you. And you can be strong, but you can relax sometimes too.” He smiles tightly. “You know I can worry enough for both of us.” 

“Why…” she shakes her head, unable to fully process everything he is saying, unable to speak of her fears yet unable to allay them entirely. “...for me?” 

“Because you did the same for me. When no one else wanted me… you took care of me. Now let me take care of you.” 

She takes a long, slow breath before responding, barely able to believe all she is hearing, yet wanting it so badly. In the end, all she can do is nod, and let Ben carry them back to bed. 

She hears him whisper, “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.” 

“We’re safe now,” she whispers back. 

They are not. They are not safe, and they are not free, but just for a moment, when they are together, it feels like they are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Injuries, medication, blood, non-explicit discussions of torture. 
> 
> They're so soft I can't. Anyway, I hope to be able to update sooner this week, as my dance classes are cancelled for president's day and my French presentation is almost done. In the mean time, I'd love to see your comments. Happy valentine's day and stay home & healthy <3


	9. Sweet Music Playing In The Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's what I'm calling the end of "part 1". Part 2 will be shorter, but with more angst and less fluff. Also, no smut# but this chapter is ~spicier~. 
> 
> _I've got some colour back, she thinks so, too_
> 
> _I laugh like me again, she laughs like you  
>  I wouldn't know where to start  
> "Sweet Music" playing "In The Dark"  
> Be still "My Foolish Heart, "  
> Don't ruin this on me  
> ~Almost (Sweet Music), Hozier_

Once Dee figures out crawling, she briefly becomes unstoppable while her inexperienced parents learn about something called _baby-proofing_. Ben honestly can’t imagine the handful she is going to be when she learns to walk, as it is her newfound ability to creep around on all fours is causing them constant panic. 

The first thing they realize is that she can no longer sleep in their bed, even in the sidecar-crib. She could crawl out at night, and fall off the edge of the bed, and get herself stuck somewhere. And there’s not a lot of room to just leave the crib floating in the room, so they decide they need to move it back to the nursery. 

“Do you think she’ll be okay sleeping by herself?” Ben asks the first night they try to move her. 

“We’ll have to figure it out eventually anyways,” Rey replies. “And she’s gotten so much better since then. She’ll be okay.” 

“I hope so,” he whispers as he sets her down in the crib, tucking her in with her blankets and stuffed animals, and a shirt that smells like him just in case she gets scared. 

“Now come on, we need to leave her, or this won’t work.” 

“But–” 

“Ben. She’s asleep. She’ll be fine, and she’ll make it clear if she’s not. Now c’mon, we need to get ready for bed too.” 

He lets Rey drag him away, and they face away from each other to change into their pajamas. When he turns back, he sees that she is wearing one of his shirts again, so big that it nearly reaches down to her knees. He hadn’t realized that she had permanently claimed this shirt for hers, but he can’t say he’s upset. It fills him with a certain… possessiveness. She is his now, just as he is hers. 

He can just see one of her scars peeking over the collar, running across her shoulder, and this only heightens the sense. 

They fall into bed next to each other, and try to get comfortable, but neither of them know which to face, and they quickly realize they have been removed from their usual patterns without Dee– including the distance they usually find between themselves. 

Eventually, Ben just faces the where the cradle usually would be, and Rey hold him from behind like usually. It’s warm and comfortable and feels safe for both of them, and it helps them sleep well, better than either of them can remember before. 

However, Dee still wake them up a few hours later with a babbling demand for attention. He’d suspected this might happen, her first night alone would probably not last all the way through, but it still makes his heart leap into his throat for a moment. 

He picks Dee up out of her crib, and brings him back to their bed. Rey reaches over his shoulder to stroke Dee’s hair and whispers, “It’s okay, your daddy’s got you.” 

“Dada,” Dee agrees sleepily, but Ben nearly falls off the bed in shock; it’s the first time she’s sad that, said _anything_ remotely resembling a word. 

“Dada?” Rey repeats. “Can you say Dada, baby?” 

“Dada,” she repeats, and Ben doesn’t know that there’s a grin about as wide as the Death Star spreading across his face, but he can feel the euphoria rising in him, and the amazement that in just a few months she has come to mean so much to him. 

They hold her and adore her long after she has fallen back to sleep.

* * *

When the word doesn’t immediately make a reappearance, they’re worried it might just be coincidence that she babbled out those syllables together, but soon after Dee begins employing it to demand her father’s attention, and as bothersome as it can be he’s still amazed. 

It’s a busy time for Dee; between talking and crawling she is also adding solid foods to her repertoire. She seems rather to enjoy carrots, though they try to keep her from eating enough to turn her orange. She’s also rather fond of fruits, and stearing her into less sugary territories such as peas presents its own problems. 

“Mm, cereal,” Rey attempts to suggest to an grumpy and uninterested baby. “Delicious.” 

Dee tries to turn away and reach for a toy, but Rey gently turns her back and attempts to recapture her attention. “Come on, honey, you need to eat,” she sighs. Of course, Ben usually feeds her in the afternoon, since Rey is usually working, and clearly she doesn’t like to deviate from the routine. 

“It’s okay, baby, mommy’s got the same food, okay?” She nods her head. “Just one bite for mommy.” 

Reluctantly, Dee takes a bite of the cereal, and finds herself rather to develop a taste for it, and over the next half hour she actually eats most of the cereal. 

“I knew you could do it,” she says with a smile. “Mommy’s very proud of you, Dee.” 

Claiming the title of _Mommy_ for herself hadn’t been entirely intentional. The idea had been rising in her mind for some time before she said it out loud, but she hadn’t been certain about it. She _was_ the closest thing Dee had to a mother, and she wasn’t sure what else she could call herself, but there were lingering doubts in her mind. 

But when she’d thrown her life and safety on the line to protect Dee, when she’d seen her baby in pain, she knew then and there that she had to be this part of her life, now and quite possibly forever. She knew she wanted to be that for her. 

Of course, it takes Dee longer to pick up on it, as she’s still leaning how to demand her father, but Rey can be patient for her. 

When a familiar shout of “Dada!” summons Ben back just as he has laid Dee down to bed, he goes to pick her up again, but as soon as she is out of the crib she begins reaching over his shoulder for Rey. He sighs, and hands her to her mother.

“If you wanted her, why’d you ask for me?” He shakes his head, while Dee merely cuddles her mother. 

“Don’t worry, darling, your dad’s just jealous,” Rey says as she kisses the baby’s curls. 

“I’m not _jealous–”_

“Hm,” she laughs. 

Ben rolls his eyes. “This is your _mama_ , Dee. Say _mama.”_

“Ben, you don’t have to…”

“She needs to learn it,” he replies. “Can you say _mama_ , Dee?” 

Rey waits nervously. As much as she’s accepted hearing that, from herself and from Ben, she is not certain she is ready to hear it from Dee. That’s another bridge she needs to prepare herself to cross. 

“Ma-ba,” Dee replies happily, and Ben realizes she will need more time and practice. 

It’s about a week and a half before she figures it out, another day when Rey comes home from work, and Ben greets her at the door and kisses her on the forehead, and Dee scrambles into her arms to greet her, and Rey feels more loved in those five seconds than she did in the sum total of the rest of her life before. 

And then Dee reaches up to touch her face, and eagerly shouts, “Mama!”, and she discovers a smile that matches Ben’s in its breadth. 

“Hello, sweetheart,” she chuckles. “Daddy’s been practicing with you, hasn’t he?”

Ben blushes. “Possibly.” 

She hugs him as best she can without squishing Dee, and he mumbles something about how they should go eat before their dinner gets cold. 

The news is good at the factory– good for her, anyways. The First Order is suffering, many of their bases have been taken out by Resistance fighters. She dares to hope that this one might be liberated before Dee’s first birthday, in four months. It seems crazy to think about, but she’s getting used to crazy. 

And everything feels different that night, as she eats and showers and they put Dee down to bed. She can’t quite put her finger on it, but there is something there. Perhaps that she and Ben have figuring out one part of their lives now… there’s some other things they need to sort out. 

She suspects as much when they curl up together in bed that night, and Ben leans over to whisper good-night, and Rey rolls back over to smile at him but feels something _charged_ between them. 

“It’s been five months today,” he says quietly. “It seems like so long and so short at the same time.”

“Yeah,” Rey agrees. “I don’t think I ever could have pictured making it through five months of… this… And it hasn’t been easy, but… in a weird way, I’m glad we got a second chance. You and I.” 

“A second chance,” he repeats shakily. “I like that. I’m glad we got one too.” Half-unconsciously, as he speaks, he brushes a stray hair off her forehead, and he feels her shiver underneath his touch. 

“I think… I think no matter what, we would have found our way back to each other, sooner or later.” 

“Maybe,” he whispers. “But I could never made this far without you. Now or our… first chance.” 

“Neither could I. Not without you.” 

And he doesn’t know who moves first, nor does she, but the next thing either of them knows his lips are on hers, and they are messy, fevered, passionate tangle of limbs and lips and hands. 

“Do you have any idea,” Ben gasps. “How long I’ve been in love with you?” 

She runs her hands hungrily through his hair, not even able to find the words to respond as she is overwhelmed with him, his hands and his eyes and his lips and his scent and his hair and _him._

“You should have hated me,” he pants. 

“I never hated you.” It’s true, she didn’t. She was scared of him, and the connection she felt to him, but she never hated him. Completely the opposite. 

“I know,” he whispers. “You had to go and care, and then I had to go and fall in love with you.” 

And this is the msot dangerous thing they could do. Hux may have hurt them and tortured them and scared them. But he has never known he could do that using them. He never knew they could care for each other enough to hurt each other. 

The most dangerous thing they can do is love each other. 

And it is all they want. 

“Oh, Ben,” she gasps, and kisses him again, and they start to move together until they have discarded both pretenses and clothes and come to learn a map of skin and freckles and scares, with their hands and then their mouths, before giving in wholly to each toher. 

It’s as they’re lying together afterwards, sweaty and exhausted, but blissfully happy, that she can say it back. 

She brushes a curl away from his ear, and whispers it sweetly: 

“I love you, Ben.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you soon babes! Please drop a comment if you can!


	10. Don't Hold Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got this chapter out pretty quickly :D. Going to work on some other stuff over the weekend but I think the next few chapters should come fairly quickly. No promises tho! Either way, I hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Content warnings in the end notes. 
> 
> _Have you ever wished you could rewind  
>  And pick up all the pieces of a life you left behind?  
> Have you ever lived on borrowed time?  
> Knowing your mistakes are chasing you down from behind  
> ~Don't Hold Me, Dean Lewis_

Rey wakes up in a blissful haze, the feeling of Ben’s arm around her waist, of his hair on her shoulder. Their clothes are where they left them, kicked to the foot of the bed. She feels like she should feel a little embarrassed, but she is just happy and comfortable. 

She stays there, warm and cozy, for a little while, but just as she’s about to get up to check on Dee, she hears a crash. 

And then another. 

Ben bolts up next to her in bed. “What is that?” 

“Sounds like bombs,” Rey says with horror, already reaching for her shirt. 

Ben yanks on his clothes and jumps out of bed. “Get Dee, I’ll see what’s going on. 

“Ben, wait!” But he’s already running out the door, and when guards don’t immediately push him back in, Rey finishes getting dressed and runs to the nursery. 

“Dada?” Dee asks when she dashes in. 

“We’ll catch up to him, love.” Rey scoops up Dee, and then a sudden thought strikes her that if this is really a bombing, a Resistance bombing, they could leave here _today_. It’s scary, but also thrilling. But she’ll also need supplies, so she grabs a bag and stuffs it with all the first things she can reach: some diapers, food, teething rings, the first clothes she can reach. 

Dee starts to cry. She’s hungry and she needs a change and she’s scared of the noises. Rey strokes her hair gently, but she’s more concerned about catching up with Ben and finding out what’s going on outside, and runs to the door. But as she leaves the nursery, Dee begins to scream and writhe, and twist around to reach back. 

“We need to go, love, what is it?” 

Dee reaches towards the crib, and Rey sees a bright red stuffed dragon, sitting abandoned among the blankets and pillows, its beady eyes looking forlorn. 

“Oh, alright,” Rey mumbles, grabbing the stuffed animal and giving it to Dee to pacify her. “But we need to go now.” 

The guards are no longer posted outside the door. They must have fled when the bombing starts. “Ben?” she shouts, looking down the three hallways. “Ben!” 

She hesitates, before racing down the hallway where the door will be, searching out for Ben in the and praying to whatever Force is guarding them. 

She comes to a window and peers out, watching for several minutes as bombs land miles away on the planet. After a little while, she catches a glimpse of one of the ships. An X-wing. 

_An X-wing._ They’re Resistance. They’re here for rescue. Maker, she’s finally going to leave this place. Dee is finally going to have a proper home. And Ben… Well, it’s going to take time for people to acclimate to him. They’ll probably want to see him punished. But he’s done so much for her, and for Dee… surely Leia will be lenient, surely she’ll want her son to take care of his family. 

“Rey? What are you doing standing there? You need to get off this planet, now!” 

She snaps her head around to see Ben, looking harried and anxious, like he’s been searching for them. Dee happily cries “Dada!” upon seeing him, but he shushes her and turns to Rey. “The ships are a few miles. Get there as fast as you can, you need to get Dee out of here. The bombs are only targeting the largest buildings so if you stay away from those you should be fine.” 

“What about you?” 

“There’s something I need to take care of here. I’ll catch up, I promise.” 

“No, let me help you. I can’t… we can’t split up again, Ben.” 

“No,” Ben says firmly, almost growling. “Dee needs to get out of this place as soon as possible. I’ll only be a moment . But if anything goes wrong, I need to know she’s safe. Please, just do this for me.” 

“Whatever it is you need to do, I can do it. You take her. You can run faster, and she needs you more than me.” 

“You can’t do it, Rey. Don’t waste time arguing, they’ll be leaving soon and you’re already behind.”

She glares fiercely at him. “What is it that’s so dangerous that I can’t go with you but perfectly safe to do by yourself?” 

He runs his hand nervously through his hair. “Look, it’s– I. I need to get intel. Access codes, base locations, all of that. They’ve probably changed a lot, but the Resistance will still expect… that is, if I want to go with you–”

“You’re coming back, then.” she says with relief. 

He smiles sadly. “Of course I’m going with you. But they won’t exactly welcome me with open arms. I need to have something to offer in exchange. So I can stay with you and Dee.” 

She lets out a deep breath. It all makes sense. He’s doing it for their family, to protect them, keep them together. It will be better in the long run. 

“Keep yourself safe. Turn around and just come to the ships if anything goes wrong. We’ll figure something out.” _Everything will be fine so long as we’re together,_ she thinks. 

“Promise me you won’t do that thing they do in the holos where you say you’ll go but then you come back for me.” 

“I promise.”

“Even if they’re about to leave without me. Don’t look back. I’ll find you again.” 

“I can’t just leave you–”

“You won’t be leaving me. No matter where you are, I’ll be able to find you.” 

She exhales slowly. “Fine. But if we get split up, we need a rendezvous. You head there as soon as we’re out and we’ll find each other.” 

“Where can we go that’s safe for both of us?” 

She hesitates for a moment before deciding, “Takodana.” 

“Really?” 

“I think Maz would know. If she saw you coming.” 

He nods “Takodana it is.”

He kisses Rey on the lips and then her forehead. “I love you.” Then he kisses Dee on the head. “You keep your mommy safe, okay?” 

“Please be careful,” Rey whispers. 

“I’ll be right behind you,” he promises. “You won’t even need to look. Now _go._ ” 

Ben turns and runs down the hallway, and before she can lose her nerve, she bolts out the door. She hears Dee cry out for daddy as they run away, but all she can do is clench her jaw and head for the ships. 

_He’s right behind me,_ she thinks as she runs through the now-razed planet, leaping over stumps where a forest once was. He’s coming. He’ll be with us soon, she thinks as she ducks behind a crumbled wall as two guards pass, her hand over Dee’s mouth to keep their location concealed. 

Her lungs start to wear out after about two miles. She used to be able to trek for hours through the desert with barely a stitch, but it’s been so long since she’s been able to exercise properly, locked away in that tiny box, only doing monotonous work with her hands. Last night, she realizes, was the most exertion she’s gotten in a long time. 

But she grits her teeth and keeps moving, though her arms are sore from carrying Dee and her lungs are aching. She has a goal in mind and something to fight for and that is enough. 

Still another two miles from where she anticipates the ships will be, she feels a humming in her ears.The Force is warning her, though of what she’s not certain. 

Then she sees the bomber flying overhead, clearly in the wrong direction, but with its bomb bay doors open. 

With mere seconds to spare, she leaps behind a rock, wrapping her whole body around Dee in the hopes of absorbing some of the shock. 

She feels the earth shake, then hears the explosion a second later. She is vaguely aware of _something_ hitting her, but she does not feel the searing pain in her right eye until a few moments afterwards. 

She manages to muffle the scream of pain, but only just. Clawing blindly at her face, she yanks out a sharp piece of shrapnel, so hot it burns her hands. Her hand comes away clean from the wound; the hot metal fully cauterized it. A small mercy, she supposes. 

She can mostly still see out of that eye, and more importantly, her legs still work, so she reorients herself and keeps running. 

_Ben is behind be. I’ll be with him soon. We’ll be a family. We’ll be safe._

She looks back to reassure herself, but all she sees is smoke and flames. The main base, where they had been staying, is almost completely destroyed. If Ben was still in there…

No. He promised he’d be careful for them. That they would come first. He wouldn’t do that to her, wouldn’t do that to Dee. 

Still, she has to reach out in the Force to find him, just to make sure he’s okay. He will be, she tells herself. She just needs a little reassurance. 

She finds him almost immediately, his signature pulsing like a beacon, and she reaches for it with desperation. 

But what she finds is so desperately, horribly _wrong._ She finds anger and fear, she finds hatred and pain. She finds… _darkness._ Deep, bleak, darkness, the likes of which she has not felt in him in a long time. 

Something must have gone horribly wrong, with whatever he was trying to do. She is sick at the thought of it, and _needs_ to go back to him… right?

Then she sees one of the Resistance ships take off from the clearing. They’re leaving. They don’t know she’s here, and they won’t wait for her. She can go back for Ben, or she can get off the planet. 

_“...if anything goes wrong, I need to know she’s safe. Please, just do this for me.”_

But… something had hurt him. Hurt him enough to draw him back to the Dark. And she can’t let that happen to him. She’s not sure he could overcome it alone. 

Still, she promised Ben she would take Dee off the planet no matter what happened to him. And he promised that no matter what, he would come back for them. 

_“I’ll be right behind you. You won’t even need to look.”_

In her heart of hearts, she trusts Ben to stay in the light. 

And so, with a silent prayer, she sprints the last distance to the ships, and arrives just as there is one remaining, starting to roll up the ramp. 

“WAIT!” she screams as loudly as she can. “Wait, I’m with the Resistance!” 

Just when she thinks they are going to leave without her, the ramp rolls out again and touches the ground. She runs on, and sees Rose Tico leading the last group off the planet. “Rey!” She exclaims. “We thought you were dead. You just disappeared–” 

“I’m okay,” she pants. “Rose, I need to–” 

“Get in,” she insists, pulling Rey up the ramp. “We need to get out of here.” 

“No, wait, I need to go back. I need to find Ben.” 

“We can’t stay, Rey. He’s probably on one of the other transports, everyone else already left.” She has no idea who Rey is talking about, assuming that he must have been a prisoner with her. “Get on the ship. Come home.” 

“No, he’s not. Please, let me go back for him.” 

“Do you know where he is, Rey?” 

She shakes her head. “We got split up back at the base, I don’t know which way he went. Anything could have happened–”

“He’s probably on one of the other transports. We had ships on the other side of the planet. Now please, get on the ship.” 

Rey would like to think that Ben is safely on one of the other transports, but she knows he isn’t even as she climbs up the ramp. 

She watches the surface of the planet out a window as they take off, hoping she’ll see him, hoping he really will have been just behind her, that she can make the ship turn back for him. 

But she sees nothing, and as the ship leaves the atmosphere and jumps into hyperspace, all that is left is her tears fogging the windows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Non-graphic depictions of injuries, bombings. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Get ready for some angst up ahead now that our little family is broken up. See you soon.


	11. Rose Red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me longer than I wanted to get out but this week was weird. Sorry, but I hope you like it! Updates will be slower going forward as life gets busy and I promised my friend I'd write him a birthday fic. He wants Skysolo, which I'm not used to, so it will take a lot of mental energy. In the meantime, enjoy this update! 
> 
> _Tell me no more stories  
>  And I'll tell you no lies  
> No one wants to hurt me  
> But everybody tries  
> And if you think that I've been waiting  
> For my planets to align  
> It's time you go on  
> Get your things, get up, get out  
> I'm doing fine  
> ~Rose Red, Emilie Autumn_

For the rest of the trip back to base, Rey feels as if she is barely in her own body. She knows certain things must have happened, but she doesn’t feel like she _does_ any of them. 

She changes Dee’s diaper in the ‘fresher on board, and gets the water in the sink as hot as she can (which isn’t hot enough) to mix a little formula. She curls up in a corner of the ship to feed Dee, and someone settles a shock blanket around her shoulders. A field medic puts some bacta patches on her face and hands, though she barely remembers being injured. She looks Dee over, who is lightly shaken but mercifully uninjured. 

All Rey can do to keep herself from breaking down entirely is to curl up in her blanket, keeping Dee nestled against her chest and rocking her to sleep. Somehow, she managed to hang on to her little stuffed dragon through all the running and crashing, though one of the wings is torn off. She’ll need to sew the hole shut later. 

A woman with a notebook sits down next to Rey on the floor of the ship. “We’re trying to keep track of all the children liberated from first order camps and prisons,” she explains gently. “So we can find their real families again, hopefully.” 

“She’s mine,” Rey snaps, curling tightly around the baby. 

“You’re her mother?” the woman asks. 

“Yes. She’s mine,” Rey repeats. 

“Well. I suppose that makes everything nice and simple. You’ll be taken to medbay for processing upon landing. And… people will probably be surprised to see you. They’ll want to know what happened to you. You don’t have to answer any questions if you don’t want to yet.” 

She nods. Shock makes it difficult for her to process anything– going back to the Resistance base seems impossible, she feels like she barely knows what it looks like anymore, like somehow it won’t be at all the same now. 

“Do you have any family, anyone who’d like to know you’re safe, who’d like to meet you when you land?” 

Rey shakes her head. Her family is sleeping in her lap right now, or else lost somewhere on the surface of the planets. “Wait… Is Finn? He’s fine, right?” If nothing else, it will be good to see her first and best friend again. 

“Finn… no last name– yes, he’s doing well. He’s been very worried about you. It was hard to keep him off the ship for this mission, but he’s needed in command. He’ll be happy to hear you’re safe.” 

“Thank you.” 

She looks down at the baby in her lap, kissing her curls. “You’re going to get to meet my friends, love. I think they’ll like you.” 

Dee does not respond, and they pass the rest of the ride in silence, trying and failing to process everything that has happened to them. 

Finally, they break the atmosphere and land in a clearing. The military personnel clear the ship first, then begin to help the dozen-odd rescued prisoners off the ship, Rey among them. She’s led into the medbay hall, seeing a few familiar faces, but none of her friends until Poe appears in the crowd. 

“You’re alive,” he says with a surprised smile. 

“Yeah,” she mumbles, “I’m alive.” Right now, she doesn’t feel like much else. Dee squirms in her arms as she wakes up, whining softly. Rey shushes her gently. 

“Oh, they must not have told you on the ship,” Poe says upon noticing the baby. “We’re processing all the children and testing them, find their families. Here, let me take her.” 

Rey freezes as Poe reaches for Dee, but Dee reacts faster, clinging to Rey and shrieking, “Mama!” 

“It’s okay, we’re going to find your mama,” Poe says, but Dee buries her head in Rey’s chest and repeats the same. 

“Shh, love. Mama’s got you. I’ve got you,” Rey croons, and Poe watches in confusion. “I think she’d better stay with me,” she tells him. “Where’s Leia? I need to talk to her.” 

“She’s busy processing everything from the mission, why, what do you need?”

“It has to be her,” Rey insists. “It’s important, please tell her I need to see her–”

“REY!” 

A familiar voice causes her to snap her neck around to see Finn, pushing through the small crowd in the hall, grinning as he walks towards her. 

“Finn!” Stars, it’s good to see him again. She misses her best friend. 

“Maker, it’s good to see you.” He reaches to give her a hug, but stops when he sees Dee. “Who’s this?” 

She smiles. Finally, someone’s not trying to take the baby away. “This is Dee. Dee, this is Finn, say hello.” 

Dee turns away shyly, hiding her face in Rey’s shirt. Rey awkwardly gives Finn a one-armed hug, unable to manage a proper one with Dee in tow. As she pulls away, the girl yanks on Rey’s shirt, with a demanding, “Ma- _ma_!” 

“Alright, darling, shh,” she sighs, and turns back to Poe. “Can I get some food for her? She missed breakfast and wouldn’t hardly take any formula on the ship.”

Poe, still looking deeply confused, leads her to a room off medbay, calls in a nurse, and comms Leia to tell her that Rey is on the base and needs to see her. 

“So, let’s start with the elephant in the room. Whose baby is that?” 

“She’s mine.” 

Poe raises an eyebrow. “She’s at least six months old. You’ve only been gone for five months, so even if you were somehow pregnant when you left–”

“She’s eight months old,” Rey interrupts. “And I… I didn’t carry her.” When their expressions only demand further explanation, she continued. “Snoke… he was trying to make a… a superweapon. He knew that me and Ben– Kylo– that our child would be powerful. When I was on Starkiller, he took some material from me, and then some from Kylo, and he… he made Dee.” 

“And he kidnapped you too…?”

“He was keeping me and Ben with her on the base, he wanted us to train her in the Force.”

“Did you?” 

She shrugs. “We did some Force-looking stuff, but she’s a baby. She doesn’t know either way. Neither does Hux.” 

The nurse hands her a bottle, this one mixed properly, and she gives it to Dee. “Eight months, you said?” 

She nods. 

“Is she walking yet?” 

“Only crawling.” 

The nurse nods. 

“How do you know she’s yours?” Finn interrupts. “She could just be another child the Order kidnapped.” 

“Or some child Ren had with some _whor–_ ”

“No,” she snaps. But she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that Dee is her child. At some point, it just stopped mattering to her. “She looks like me. And she looks like Ben.” 

“But there’s still a chance she’s not, right?” Poe insists. 

Rey nods, feeling a rising lump in her throat, while Dee feeds obliviously in her lap. 

“If that’s true, her real family deserves to know she’s still alive,” Finn says gently. “And I’m sure you could work something out–” 

“We can give both of you a quick DNA test,” the nurse offers. “You could know in just a couple minutes.” 

“Yes, please,” Rey whispers. She has so quickly switched from not caring to _needing_ to know, needing to believe that she could keep Dee. 

The idea that Dee could have another family… it hurts. She’d like that she would only want what is best for her baby, but she can’t. She wants Dee to be hers and hers alone. She doesn’t know what she would do if she wasn’t. 

“This will just be a quick prick,” the nurse says. “We can use it to make sure she’s vaccinated, too.” She draws the blood so quickly from Dee, she barely even looks up from her bottle. Rey can barely hold the baby, her hands shake so badly as she washes her centrifuge the sample and compare it to the DNA library. 

“She’s yours.” 

The entire room seems to exhale. Rey uncurls the tiniest bit, and Finn and Poe both acknowledge this with a nod. 

“The test also says she’s the granddaughter of… Han Solo and Leia Organa?” 

Rey almost rolls her eyes at their surprised faces. “I told you, Ben is her _father.”_

“Ben as in Kylo Ren,” Poe says suspiciously. 

“Ben as in Ben Solo,” she snaps back. “And he didn’t get off the base with me. I need to go back for him.” 

“You’ll have to talk to Leia about–”

“I heard you were in here?” Just as her name is spoken, Leia steps in the door, her eyes scanning their confused vignette. 

“Leia,” Rey says with relief. “I need to go back to the First Order base. Ben’s still there, he didn’t make it off.” 

“Slow down, Rey,” the general replies, holding out a hand. “I think I need some explanations first. And who’s this?” 

“This is your granddaughter.” And yes, Leia probably deserves a clearer and less shocking explanation than that, but Rey’s tired, and tired of explaining herself to people, and she just wants to find a safe place for her baby and get her Ben back. 

The nurse clicks her tongue. “The DNA test confirms it.” 

“Rey?” 

With a sigh, she repeats the whole story, including the part where she and Ben got separated as they left the planet. At some point, the nurse finishes the blood tests and treats Rey’s burns. Leia has many, _many,_ questions, but she is patient, and Rey does her best to explain. 

“Your son is alive,” she finishes. “But you need to let me go back for him. He’s hurt, and he needs help.” 

“He could just be on one of the other transports,” Leia reasons. “One of them got derailed and had to stop for repairs on a nearby planet. It won’t be back for another two days. I don’t think I can authorize another mission until it returns. And… Rey, how do you expect me to explain this? Expending precious resources to bring Kylo Ren into our midst?” 

“He’s your _son,_ Leia,” she sighs. “Does it matter what they would think? Don’t you want him back?” 

“What I want doesn’t matter. I haven’t been a mother in a long, long time, Rey. I need to think of my people first. I need to do what’s best for them.” 

“I’m a mother now, too,” she snaps back. “And I need to do what’s best for my child. And that means getting her father back. Whether you allow me to or not, I’m going back for him.” 

“You’re not one of my soldiers, so I can’t stop you,” she admits. “But if you really want to do what’s best for… what’s her name?” 

“Deandra Solo. We call her Dee.” 

“If you want what’s best for Dee, you need to take care of yourself too. What if something happened to you? What would she do?” 

This time, to her surprise, it’s Finn who answers: 

“We would take care of her.” 

She turns to him, as do Poe and Leia. 

“I can’t say I understand or agree with _anything_ that’s going on,” he admits. “But Rey shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not her daughter will have a home. We can at least do that much.” 

“Thank you, Finn. But I won’t leave Dee alone, I can take care of myself. All I need is a ship–”

“Slow down,” Leia says for the second time that day. “Did you and… you and Ben have a plan? For if you got separated?” 

Rey gets the sense that she has not spoken her son’s name in a long time. “We agreed… we agreed we’d meet on Takodana. But if he couldn’t get there, then I need to help him, I can’t just wait for him to show up.” 

“At least wait a day,” she suggests. “Just let everything settle. Don’t go charging back in headfirst.” 

“If he finds his way back to Takodana, we’ll hear right away, but if he doesn’t–”

Just then, the comm on Leia’s belt chirps. She picks it up to listen to the message, then looks back at Rey with wide eyes.

“It’s Maz. On… Takodana.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to highlight Finn's importance as Rey's friend a little in this chapter, because platonic relationships are super important and sometimes Finn gets tossed by the wayside in this fandom when he's a great character who's very important to Rey. Might write a fic about their friendship sometime, we'll see. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!!! Please drop a comment, I love hearing from you. Happy Almost-March!


	12. Coming Home To You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a filler chapter, but here goes! And I've been working a lot on my friend's b-day fic, but I'm going to try to get a chapter a week until we're done... which will be soon! Please enjoy!
> 
> _And I am coming home to you  
>  With my own blood in my mouth  
> And I am coming home to you  
> If it’s the last thing that I do  
> ~Sax Rohmer #1, Mountain Goats_

Ben wants to keep his promise to Rey, he truly does. As much as he desires to find Hux and kill him for what he has done to Rey, done to his family, it is _that_ family that restrains the urge. 

He would not let his anger lead to their suffering. 

So, he keeps his promise, and goes to find Hux’s office as quickly as he can. Predictably, the coward has already fled, too hasty even to take plenty of valuable data chips. Ben shoves them in his pockets, not caring what they are, only hoping that some of them can help. 

And at this point, he really means to go back. To catch up with Rey and Dee before the ships leave. To go back to the Resistance and, whatever happens to him, _finally_ see them safe and happy. 

The thought is enough to keep him strong as he sprints out of the room, dodging bombs and shells and watching for his Rey. 

The ships began to take off, and he is still a ways from them, but he thinks he can make it; honestly, is there anything he couldn’t do when it comes to Rey. 

But then he slips on something on the rubble-covered ground, and is momentarily blinded by pain as he tears his hands on the ground. 

When he looks to see what caused it, he finds a scrap of dark grey fabric with the edges burnt, likely by one of the blasts. 

But it looks worryingly similar to the kind of clothes Rey wears– admittedly, it could be any standard First Order uniform, but something feels distinctly _off_ about it. He quickly scans the area for any other clues: and he finds a piece of shrapnel, still hot, and lined with blood. 

_This doesn’t mean anything,_ he tells himself as he roots through the rubble, finding a little more blood and a little more fabric and… a data stick, just like the ones he and Rey used to store photos of Dee. 

Again, he tells himself, it is a generic item, it could mean anything, but it is with increasing desperation that he digs through the rubble, as if he could find anything that could make this seem any better or worse. 

And that is when he sees it: the bright red, dully glittering wing of one familiar stuffed red dragon. 

Dee’s favorite toy, which Rey must have snatched up as she fled from the base. Which neither of them would let go easily. It was not poorly made; whatever was strong enough to break it, when Dee would no doubt have been clinging to, would have been… violent. 

And he feels it tear him at his very core. 

This, he is certain, is all that is left of his baby daughter, and of the women he loves. 

As he turns back to the burning base, he can feel the rage brewing in him. 

Hux did this. And he will _pay_ for it.

* * *

Rey reaches for the comm. “Let me talk to her.” 

Being the balance between everyone in this room is hard for Leia. Between Poe, who always errs on the side of suspicion, between Finn, who is loyal to Rey to a fault, between Rey, who is in shock and completely dedicated to her cause. And… herself, who is stunned, confused, and nervous, and must maintain at least some façade of calm. 

“Leia? You still there?”

“Yes, Maz, I’m here.” 

“There’s this life pod that just showed up here, no warning, or anything,” she begins. “And… Leia, it’s your son.” 

At hearing this– at knowing it is _really_ true, that she will see her son again– it is too much for her, and she hands the comm to Rey. 

“Is he alright, Maz? Is he hurt?” 

“He’s injured. I haven’t gotten a change to really look yet,” she says in a stressed voice. “I thought you would want me to hold him, prisoner, or–” 

“No!” Rey says emphatically. “I mean…” she shakes her head. “I’ll be there soon, okay? Just… take care of him until I get there.” 

She expects confusion, or at the very least questions from Maz, but all she hears is. “Alright, Rey, I’ll take care of him.” 

“Thank you,” she says, and Maz clicks off the comm.

She turns to the group around her and repeats: “I _will_ go, and you can’t stop me.” 

Leia looks at Rey, her eyes seeming darker than before, filled with a new anger that was not there before. She may not have agreed with it, but now she understands why the Jedi were not allowed to have families– there is something dangerous about it. 

“I know, Rey. I don’t think an entire fleet could stop you. But let us get the Falcon ready for you. Take a shower, tend to your wounds, get a change of clothes. Get some rest. You won’t be any use to him if you’re dead on your feet.”

Much as it pains her to wait, Leia is right: she needs to take care of herself first. Ben is with Maz. He’ll be okay until she can get to him. 

“Where… are the ‘freshers? And do you have a soap I can use for Dee?” 

Dee has finished her bottle, and reaches up to cling to Rey’s neck. “Dada?” she asks hopefully, wanting her mother to find Ben for her. 

“Dada’s not here yet, love,” she whispers. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him soon.” 

Finn and Poe point her to the refreshers, and the nurse finds some soap, leaving Leia alone in shock to process all this. 

That her son, according to Rey, would turn back to the light. 

That he would come back to them, be part of a family again, and that he would do this all for Rey. 

That she has a _granddaughter._

A sweet granddaughter, who looks remarkably like Ben, and so much like Han with that. And that Rey and this granddaughter seem to know her son better than she ever has. 

And now that she is alone, Leia indulges herself in something she has not done in a long time. 

She cries.

* * *

While she washes off, Rey can finally acknowledge that she has been in shock, and perhaps acted hastily. But all the same, she had to stick up for Ben; no one else would if she didn’t. 

And Dee… they’d all been so suspicious of her, so unwilling to believe that she was Rey’s daughter… did she really strike them as so poor of a mother? But Ben always told her she made a good mother to Dee. 

And Dee… she’s happy. Rey just needs to keep her safe, get her father home, and she can handle everything else… later. 

Compartmentalization is her key to survival, and there is only so much she can process right now. 

Because while the shock may be subsiding, she is still unbelievably stressed, thinking about Ben, wondering if he is alright– he is alive, hurt, but alive. Whether he’s hurt badly she does not know. If he was able to put himself in a life pod it could not be so bad, right? 

Rey finishes scrubbing the dust and blood off herself, lowers the water temperature, and starts to wash Dee off. She splashes happily in the water, giggling as Rey delicately rubs shampoo into her curls, and when did they get so long? 

In just this one moment, Rey can pretend there is no outside world, that she will step out of the refresher and Ben will be waiting out there for her and all will be well. 

She changes into some clothes provided by the Resistance, the cream colored tunic and brown trousers feeling colorful compared to the blacks and greys she has been wearing. 

This is the first time she’s seen her daughter in anything other than black. 

It is not until now that she has fully processed how much they have lost by being shut away. 

Trying not to dwell on these thoughts, she opens up her bag to go through what she snatched up before she left. Dee reaches for her teething rings when she sees them come out of the bag, and takes them with a happy gurgle. 

She finds the data sticks they used to download the photos– it’s a good thing she downloaded the last batch only yesterday. There’s a small hole in the corner of the bag, but they all seem to still be there. She’ll find a datapad to upload them on to later. 

A change of clothes for Dee, diapers… all what she had expected. But then she comes across a shirt, a shirt of Ben’s. It wasn’t one of the ones she had taken either– it was his, and it still smelled like him. She buries her face in the soft fabric and inhales deeply, taking in his scent. Stars, she misses him already. He had come to mean so much to her in so short an amount of time, and now she doesn’t know what she would ever do if she lost him. 

She pulls the sweater on over her clothes so she can keep him close until they are together again, and gathers up her things. 

Dee lifts her arms up again. “Dada?” 

Rey scoops her up once the bag is packed again. “Soon, darling, soon. Just be patient.” 

“Dada,” she repeats sadly, but returns to chewing on her teething ring. 

Stepping out of the refresher, she hopes to slip away quietly and get something to eat before getting back on the Falcon, but she runs into Leia almost as soon as she steps out. 

“Rey.” 

Almost instinctively, Rey pulls Dee closer to her chest. “What is it?” 

“I… I wanted to see my granddaughter.” 

“I thought you said you weren’t a mother anymore,” Rey says petulantly. So her bitterness isn’t entirely gone. She’s entitled to a little bitterness. 

“I haven’t been in a long time,” she replies. “But… I’m ready to be that again. If he’s really coming home.” 

“He is as soon as I can go to him.” 

Leia nods, and they stand in the hallway in silence for a moment, before she finally asks, “Can I… can I hold her?” 

“I… she doesn’t always like new people,” she mumbles. She hasn’t met very many new people. “But here, we can try.” 

Leia holds out her arms, and Rey carefully nestles the baby there. 

“Shh, love, it’s okay,” she whispers when Dee begins to fuss. “It’s… it’s your grandma, darling.” 

Then Leia begins to hum, and suddenly Rey realizes it is a familiar song, one of the ones Ben used to sing to Dee. But this time, she realizes, she’s not jealous or scared of the intimacy of the family. 

She’s a part of it now. 

And that is all she would need.

* * *

Within two hours, Rey is on the Falcon, and Chewie is greeting Rey with a rib crushing hug. He introduces himself to Dee, and proves himself to be rather good with babies. It brings a smile to her face. 

“You aren’t taking her with you, are you?” Finn asks with concern when he sees Rey boarding. 

“Where else would she go?” 

“It’s not safe,” he replies. “We’re still at war. If the ship gets shot, or if soldiers find you…” He shakes his head. “We can take care of her for you, Rey.” 

“But…” And stars, she can’t picture leaving Dee behind, but she needs to to find her father, and she’s never been away from Ben or from Dee, so far for so long, not for a long time. 

But she grits her teeth the same way she did when she chose getting Dee away safely instead of going back for Ben. 

Now she can save them both. 

So with a gentle kiss on her dark curls, so like her father’s, and a quick hug, she departs on the Falcon, and tries not to listen to Dee crying. 

_I’m coming back, love,_ she thinks as they fly to Takodana.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you soon! Your comments give me life

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are my life.


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